[ExI] Click bots, chat bots, bots, bots.......

[spike at rainier66.com]

> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat
Subject: [ExI] Click bots, chat bots, bots, bots.......

On Sat, 27 Jun 2020 at 17:17, spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
<snip>
>> What if… the singularity gradually happens and we get to where we cannot tell which stories are real, which are being massively likebotted, which are being generated by memebots and trendbots then massively liked by likebots?  We look around one day and realize we can no longer reliably tell meat world reality from virtual reality.  The singularity happened when no one was looking, or if they were looking they didn’t recognize it while it was underway.
>


>...Dear spike, you little treasure -  ...

Hey I never claimed to be a mod hipster.  Only creative.

>...The bot industry can do almost anything nowadays... Is anything on the internet real??  BillK

Your link to the customer service-bot really has me thinking BillK.  Plenty of us here have played with Eliza back in the day, and we have dealt with useless customer service reps until we were so frustrated we decided it would be better to smash the recalcitrant product to flinders with a well-aimed crowbar than to have a stroke from sheer frustration.

OK, no worries, imagine a resale business on thin profit margin (it isn't hard to do.)  They cannot afford real meat customer service so they resort to the low cost alternative, a speech recognition customer "service" rep based on Eliza, but with speech recognition and generation, and a cool twist: if the customer angrily shrieks she wishes to talk to the manager, the bot changes its accent and continues its laser-focus efforts to make this annoying customer go away.  

Let the system ratchet up to higher and higher level virtual managers, each with an accent progressing steadily toward British nobility, until the service-bot claims to be Reginald Prufrock Windor-Whitefield, who then assures the irate customer he knows exactly how to help, at which time he transfers the voice back to the original Pakistani-accented service-bot.  Customer smashes product with sledge hammer, warranty voided, done.  None of this costs the company much of anything.

Then it occurred to me: computers make us evil.

spike