![\"Screen](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/loopcntr.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Screen-Shot-2016-07-02-at-10.33.57-AM.png?resize=500%2C253&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nThis morning I was researching \u201clearning analytics\u201d and my search led, after many, many clicks, to this web page:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Note the purple chat window pop-up that appeared in the lower lefthand corner of my active window. Great, I thought, someone wants to know why I\u2019m reading this page.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the ensuing dialog:<\/p>\n
![\"pastedGraphic.png\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/9379E188-03EC-415F-9497-EF6330E604BF\/pastedGraphic.png?w=500\")
\u00a0 \u00a0Nadia Dennis<\/b><\/p>\n
Nadia Dennis<\/p>\n
10:26 am \u00a0\u00a0Hi, sorry to disturb \ud83d\ude42
\nCan I ask which school you
\nrepresent?<\/p>\n
Visitor<\/span><\/p>\n 10:27 am \u00a0\u00a0I have a nonprofit research organization called LO*OP Center, Inc. LO*OP stands for Learning Options*Open Portal.<\/span><\/p>\n Nadia Dennis<\/p>\n 10:27 am \u00a0\u00a0I’ll be glad to help, could I have your name please?<\/p>\n Visitor<\/span><\/p>\n 10:27 am \u00a0\u00a0Liza<\/span><\/p>\n Nadia Dennis<\/p>\n 10:27 am \u00a0\u00a0Nice to meet you Liza! \u00a0To know how I could properly address your concern, would just like to clarify if I am chatting with a student, a teacher or a parent?<\/p>\n Visitor<\/span><\/p>\n 10:28 am \u00a0\u00a0There are other designations. I’m an educational researcher.\u00a0<\/span>I also identify as a student, teacher and parent.<\/span><\/p>\n Nadia Dennis<\/p>\n 10:29 am \u00a0\u00a0Can we verify if you currently have Compass Learning in your school?<\/p>\n Visitor<\/span><\/p>\n 10:29 am \u00a0\u00a0If you want to have a meaningful conversation you’ll have to free yourself from your script.\u00a0<\/span>It’s not a school.<\/span><\/p>\n 10:30 am \u00a0\u00a0I’m not going to buy anything from Compass. Do you really want to chat with me?<\/span><\/p>\n Nadia Dennis<\/p>\n 10:30 am \u00a0\u00a0You may call us at 866.586.7387 or email successteam@compasslearning.com<\/p>\n Visitor<\/p>\n 10:31 am \u00a0\u00a0This chat is a fine example of ARTIFICIAL STUPIDITY. It does nothing to encourage me to contact Compass Learning again.<\/span><\/p>\n Read<\/p>\n Nadia Dennis<\/p>\n 10:31 am \u00a0\u00a0If there is nothing else, I’ll close this chat window. If you need anything else, feel free to reopen chat. Thanks for visiting.<\/p>\n Poor Nadia Dennis. She flunked the Turing Test. I could not distinguish her from a robot \u2014 a particularly unsophisticated robot at that.<\/p>\n Increasingly I am encountering Artificial not-so Intelligent voices and typists when I telephone an organization or use \u201clive\u201d chat on the internet. Even when I can determine that the voice is that of a living human being that person is often reduced to serving as a computer peripheral. By this I mean that the person is constrained to read responses from a preprogrammed script and has no personal skills with which to address my topic or problem.<\/p>\n I have to admit to becoming verbally abusive when I find myself in either situation. Since the AI has no feelings (no matter how often it claims to experience\u00a0 \u201cgladness\u201d or \u201csorrow\u201d) my emotional venting has no consequence. However, no live operator deserves my expressions of wrath.<\/p>\n There are two significant personal consequences and two societal outcomes that I ask my\u00a0 readers to consider and comment on.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t get me wrong. I\u2019m not a luddite battling against all forms of automation techniques. I am strongly opposed to two things: Bad Design and attempts to pass off or disguise machines as human. Poor design exposes us to one form of \u2018artificial stupidity\u2019 that wastes our time and fails to solve our problems or provide us with usable information. Clouding the distinction between the human and the machine demeans both types of entity.<\/p>\n So where is the light at the end of this dark tunnel? A clean, carefully-designed, clearly demarked human-machine symbiosis. Humans need to be being creative, non-routine, emotive, person-to-person. Machines should continue to be employed to augment human productivity and enhance human life and planetary sustainability. To reach these goals we humans must evolve new socioeconomic institutions that permit the wealth we are generating with our machines to be distributed broadly throughout the people of the planet. Education is one important key to such evolution. So now, having ranted at length, I\u2019ll return to my search for tools to enhance human learning and teaching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This morning I was researching \u201clearning analytics\u201d and my search led, after many, many clicks, to this web page: Note the purple chat window pop-up that appeared in the lower lefthand corner of my active window. Great, I thought, someone … Continue reading
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![\"i-hate-att\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/loopcntr.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/i-hate-att.jpg?resize=200%2C200&ssl=1\")
From a societal perspective, it\u2019s probably not a good idea for businesses to piss off their customers. If you do a web search using keywords \u2018hate\u2019 and \u2018AT&T\u2019 you\u2019ll find plenty of evidence supporting the growing dissatisfaction with the customer service provided by this large corporation. Such frustration is not unique to AT&T. It begins when consumers try to contact the company and must thread their way through a maze of automated options and recorded voices professing delight, sorrow and desire to please. It often ends with a meaningless survey.<\/li>\n