Up: [[Personal Essay and Memoir]] Created: 2024-05-26 It was a long time before the bot gave herself away and I'm still not sure if she did. The story is this: When Sarah called from my bank's customer service department, she already knew that I'd received half a dozen emails offering me a bank credit card. She wondered why I hadn’t jumped on this opportunity. I said I had two credit cards already and no need of a third, thanks anyway. I don't know if it's true but I've always believed that telemarketers get paid more for a phone call if they're allowed to give you their whole spiel. I wanted to help so when young, eager sounding Sarah asked if she could take a minute to tell me about the various cards, I warned her that I was still going to say No, but that if it would please her boss, I'd be happy to listen to her spiel. So Sarah spieled. I heard all about the wondrous benefits of three different banks cards then, at the end, she asked which one I liked the most. "None", I replied. "I don't want another card." Sarah pushed. "If you had to choose one, which would it be?" She pushed again. "Just choose a card and it will be in the mail to you. It's free!" Sarah pushed more, and then still more. Eventually I hung up, irritated and sad that Sarah hadn’t responded to my kindness with some humanity of her own. That thought was the moment I got suspicious. Sarah had been more insistent than the average telemarketer, and far more than I've experienced with a woman who sounded like she might be in her mid 20's. Even more telling, each time I said something, Sarah’s responding ‘hms’ and ‘uh huh’s’ were repeated three times, each time with the same tone and duration. I wish I’d recognized it at the time, wish I’d thought to ask Sarah if she was a human or a bot. Pause with me here to take in that last sentence. I was seriously going to ask this young woman if she was human. How is it possible that a sentence like that can even be written? Am I delusional? The next morning I did some digging and learned that I am, sadly, not delusional. My bank has been in the forefront of AI development for the last ten years. They believe that AI relieves the ‘real’ staff of mundane tasks so they can focus on customer needs. I can only assume that being offered a credit card qualifies as a mundane task, and I therefore didn’t deserve human contact. I can assume, but I can’t verify because I couldn’t find the name of a single human who would be able to tell me if I had been speaking to a bot. Are we living in a world where we have to ask if we are talking with a human being? Is it becoming acceptable that we can't reach a real person even when we try? If so, beam me up Scotty. There is no intelligent life down here. 516 words Earlier draft is called [[Sarah Spieled]] - 392 words