Humanity
A little while ago I went into my local bank. It’s a small branch where I live, a place where everybody tends to know someone who knows someone and then the whole place knows each other. Because of this I had a friendly chat with the cashier whilst I was doing my banking. Afterwards this made me think about where society and the technology we are using is going.
Then I reflected on another recent event where the battery went kaput on the car and it wouldn’t start. Called the breakdown people in full panic mode and was greeted by an automated system that then wanted me to use the link they sent to report the issue on a web based form. I froze, I panicked and eventually got in contact with a human to explain the situation – though I was asked the ‘postcode’ (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcodes_in_the_United_Kingdom) of where I was broken down – something that’s a bit tricky as you don’t tend to know this. Luckily in actuality I was in the supermarket car park which was easy to describe. It was only after I calmed down that I realised that the web form could use the location of the phone to help locate me, and therefore the breakdown service.
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Thoughts
There appears to be so much drive towards online banking / use of AI ‘help’ chatbots. Detaching us from the human contact and in the process are we losing something? In the rush to embrace the future are we letting go of the past too fast? Or rather not employing the unique human skills we employ to communicate with and help each other. Instead relying on artificial technology for perhaps the sake of cost as we as employees can be costly.
Cost though is only a measure, a metric we have defined upon which to understand the world and our interaction within it. It has great meaning because of its connection to substance both in terms of the physical and temporal. Yet at the same time it is arbitrary in that the cost of something relates to its value.
Therefore the value of a human to help a human can be worth the cost. To achieve in such a way that empathetic understanding brings the solution required rather than the solution the machine ‘thinks’ you need.
Reflection
I have written about this area before in ‘Human or Machine?’ and ‘Can AI lie?’. I still remain convinced within myself that we as humans need to retain ourselves as the primary point of contact for solving our problems. That we use tools to help but not replace us. That we need to travel this new AI path carefully with understanding and not forgetting ourselves in the process.
- Humanity – 16th July 2025
- Max sections – 16th June 2025
- Static adjustment – 16th May 2025
