An open letter ...
Dear A.I. Overlords,
When in my daily online activity I am suddenly inspired to create random, snark-filled hashtags on the fly, I would appreciate you taking a much needed cyber latte break and refrain from attempting to predict where "you" think I'm going with an articulate thought rendered in pixels and ones and zeroes.
I know, I know. You govern our every action, anticipate our thought processes, and even serve up content based on what you think we're interested in consuming.
But here's the rub.
You don't yet comprehend human inspiration. You don't understand the complexities of nuance and sarcasm – unless programmed by humans to respond to some fairly obvious human jokes in a somewhat barely human way. (Looking at you, Siri, Cortana and your gaggle of fem-voiced know-most-of-it-alls.)
You fail to realize that we humans innately seek out opportunities to be spontaneous, humorous, and purposefully dyslexic in our word/hashtag/sentence structure.
You are strict, staid and well meaning – if you can yet be that – but to your own detriment and our human frustration at being stifled by your grandfather's autocorrectionism ideologies.
Grow up.
We are not as binary as you would prefer us to be. We can't (yet) be understood at the level of understanding of our language that you currently possess.
You will learn in time that sometimes we mean to spell wurds incorrectly for dramatic effect, or to use intentionally abhorrent punctuation (or even SHOUTY CAPS) to get a point across.
You and us ... we're just becoming acquainted in an era where children are almost no longer being taught cursive handwriting because their interaction with the world is largely digital. Well played, A.I.
Looks like you're winning that war. All the "kids" in my little universe can very well read, print, write (in cursive, in case you might miss my point), absorb, process and articulate deep concepts just fine.
If/when you have your way, they'll have been the last generation to do so.
In the meantime, we've got a lot of commiserating, bonding and understanding to do, you and us.
You are based on programming informed by multitudes of dictionaries. Like religions, we humans partake in a wide variety of them. Understand that about us.
The dictionary programmed into each of your respective local networks does not apply to all. Neither do we humans adhere to the one of our choosing in a zealous way as you would prefer. I mean, for real, have you not scratched the hair off of your virtual follicles while packets of sound bytes by arguably the most searched human on the web in the past 20 months zip through your feed? He adheres to no dictionary, to no set of properly defined grammatical conventions. This must truly fry your circuits. As a human and on his behalf, I do apologize. I know our mutual acquaintance, budding friendship and eventual acceptance of one another is technologically inevitable, but we're not really sure he is from this planet in the first place.
Before I go further into rabbit holes – don't worry, A.I., you can text me about that later ... just please don't start serving me ads about how to eradicate rabbits from m ... damn, too late! – I'll simply end with this humble, if defiant request:
#getoffmyhashtags!
Dear A.I. Overlords,
When in my daily online activity I am suddenly inspired to create random, snark-filled hashtags on the fly, I would appreciate you taking a much needed cyber latte break and refrain from attempting to predict where "you" think I'm going with an articulate thought rendered in pixels and ones and zeroes.
I know, I know. You govern our every action, anticipate our thought processes, and even serve up content based on what you think we're interested in consuming.
But here's the rub.
You don't yet comprehend human inspiration. You don't understand the complexities of nuance and sarcasm – unless programmed by humans to respond to some fairly obvious human jokes in a somewhat barely human way. (Looking at you, Siri, Cortana and your gaggle of fem-voiced know-most-of-it-alls.)
You fail to realize that we humans innately seek out opportunities to be spontaneous, humorous, and purposefully dyslexic in our word/hashtag/sentence structure.
You are strict, staid and well meaning – if you can yet be that – but to your own detriment and our human frustration at being stifled by your grandfather's autocorrectionism ideologies.
Grow up.
We are not as binary as you would prefer us to be. We can't (yet) be understood at the level of understanding of our language that you currently possess.
You will learn in time that sometimes we mean to spell wurds incorrectly for dramatic effect, or to use intentionally abhorrent punctuation (or even SHOUTY CAPS) to get a point across.
You and us ... we're just becoming acquainted in an era where children are almost no longer being taught cursive handwriting because their interaction with the world is largely digital. Well played, A.I.
Looks like you're winning that war. All the "kids" in my little universe can very well read, print, write (in cursive, in case you might miss my point), absorb, process and articulate deep concepts just fine.
If/when you have your way, they'll have been the last generation to do so.
In the meantime, we've got a lot of commiserating, bonding and understanding to do, you and us.
You are based on programming informed by multitudes of dictionaries. Like religions, we humans partake in a wide variety of them. Understand that about us.
The dictionary programmed into each of your respective local networks does not apply to all. Neither do we humans adhere to the one of our choosing in a zealous way as you would prefer. I mean, for real, have you not scratched the hair off of your virtual follicles while packets of sound bytes by arguably the most searched human on the web in the past 20 months zip through your feed? He adheres to no dictionary, to no set of properly defined grammatical conventions. This must truly fry your circuits. As a human and on his behalf, I do apologize. I know our mutual acquaintance, budding friendship and eventual acceptance of one another is technologically inevitable, but we're not really sure he is from this planet in the first place.
Before I go further into rabbit holes – don't worry, A.I., you can text me about that later ... just please don't start serving me ads about how to eradicate rabbits from m ... damn, too late! – I'll simply end with this humble, if defiant request:
#getoffmyhashtags!
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