The Chatbot — The Daily PPILL #111

I am sort of ok with Chatbots, you know, the ones that now popup on websites. Especially if they are really good and provide me with the information that I need.

Basically, this would be a chatbot that passes the “Turing test”. If you don’t know exactly what that means, it is that “a human being should be unable to distinguish the machine from another human being by using the replies to questions put to both”.

But lately, there is something that has been ticking me off. Sometimes it happens that I just cannot get the answers I need from the chatbot, no matter how I phrase my questions. Then, frustrated, I do the equivalent of “press zero”, and I ask to be transferred to a human. A few times, it has happened, that they insist they are human.

So wait a minute, are you really a human that cannot answer the question that I am asking and you keep repeating the same rehearsed answer? Or are you just a machine that is programmed to lie? I would assume it’s the later. But then, Why insist that it’s human? What’s the purpose? Are they just messing with me to see how I react?

Programming a machine to lie is to deceive customers, and that’s bad. But you know what would be sad? A human that doesn’t pass the Turing test!

As published on The Channelmeister