Empathy. Politeness. Ethics. Compassion. All HUMAN emotions and precepts. Enter Siri, Alexa, Google Voice, Cortana, Echo and the new plethora of machine generated voice assistants.
As “learning” machine generated assistants become more and more pervasive, I’ve found myself begging the question “Is it ok to be rude to A.I.” Is it ok to say “You always get it wrong, Siri” or “You’re useless Alexa!”. In this blog post, I’d like to explain my feelings about it. I have not researched or fabricated a cleverly positioned paper. This article shouldn’t be used as support literature for a college paper or thesis. These are simply my thoughts on the ethics of human behavior in an increasingly A.I. world.
As we know, machines are continually “learning” from human beings for their algorithms. Right now, the sophistication is not such that machine generated voice assistants react to “politeness” nor do they respond with “emotion” in their answers. However, as human beings with a consciousness that affect everything from the plants and animals around us, to substances like water and minerals - we are the conscious leaders of how our technology evolves for the future.
How we speak to others may affect them, but it mostly affects how we feel and process the world around us. Have you ever found that the days we feel angry, helpless, or fearful there seem to be so many more things to be angry, helpless or fearful about? We attract what we are and what we vibrate - like a tuning fork. This is a well known fact that isn’t up for debate in many metaphysical circles. As an Electrical Engineer, this makes sense to me. We get “in tune” with whatever we are putting out. Ever started looking for a house and all of a sudden you see all the “FOR SALE” signs out there? Yeah, it’s a thing.
Being rude to A.I. really says more about the person being rude, rather than the A.I. assistant receiving the rudeness. And like any learning or sentient being, I believe that A.I. will evolve to either A) ignore the rudeness, hence potentially ignoring other important information from the speaker or B) train rudeness into it’s algorithm where it will begin to lose “social cues” it may have learned from the initial programming and learning sequence.
Moreover, as we use the devices in front of children, employees, peers, friends, family - they will get to see the side of us that is ugly and uncharitable. How does it make you feel when you see someone yelling at the waitstaff or service people? Pretty gross, huh? Being rude hurts everyone within listening/seeing distance.
So, I believe that kindness always wins - even when speaking to A.I. machine generated voice assistants. You get more of what you put out into the world / universe. After all, according to quantum physics, we all live at certain vibrations and positive “vibes” are palpable. So, put out the good stuff! Use the good words and thank you A.I. assistants for doing some of the heavy lifting as we continue to creatively pioneer our future!
-Melissa Del Toro Schaffner
