Matt from London/Flickr
The other day a client copied his AI on an email to me, asking "her" to schedule an appointment with me. He included a postscript that said, "I'm trying out a beta... let's see if this works... just tell her a few times you are free."
It took me a few minutes to figure out how to reply. Could I respond like a human, and write casually? Or did I need to just include times and nothing else? I opted for being me, and - amazingly - it worked.
That said, it was a pretty empty feeling to communicate with an entity that will never:
a. Laugh at my jokes
b. React with any genuine emotion
c. Pay attention to anything other than the narrow task at hand
I've had this feeling before... with people.
There are plenty of times during a normal week that I know with absolute certainty that the other person (an actual person) isn't listening to me, even though he or she claims the opposite.
Case in point: yesterday, someone exclaimed, "Great!" before I said anything. She asked me a question, I was gathering my thoughts, and she burst out, "Great!"
Truth is, she was so distracted and anxious that she lost the ability to even appear to be listening.
On Halloween, I walked into an office and the woman inside was dressed a bit like a goth and had red reptile eyes; they were the most realistic "alien" contact lenses I have ever seen. So much so, that I was actually afraid to say, "Hey, cool Halloween eyes!" What if this was her normal appearance? So I just tried to be nonchalant and left.
Afterward, I felt guilty for being as zoned out as the people I'm describing here.
If you don't react like a human, you risk acting like a robot.
Too many people just go through the motions. They don't actually try to resolve problems; they just do the bare minimum. They don't try to be empathetic or even effective.
This is the part that really bothers me: they just try to be safe.
Don't take the initiative, don't be creative, don't be compassionate... just get through the day. This is the essence of acting like a machine. "I... will... perform... at... 83%... efficiency... today."
Machines haven't even taken over the human race, and I already yearn for people to act more like dynamic, interesting, warm people.
Are you in?