Our city buses learned to speak a few weeks ago, and you
could have knocked me over with a feather.
Partner and I often ride together in the morning, and we’re
used to the same things happening every day: the same driver, the same people
getting on at the same stops.
Then I heard this odd mumbling voice coming from outside the
bus. At first I thought I was imagining things. Then I realized that the voice
made sense. “Wickenden and Ives!” it said. “Next stop, Wickenden and Ives!”
Naturally it didn’t pronounce the words very well.
WICK-en-den came out WEEKEND-un. It’s a machine. It has no subtlety.
Then it began to announce stops, as follows: “STOP
REQUEASTED!”
Requeasted?
Well, as I said, it’s a machine.
Do we like things talking to us? Many of us do not. Several
studies have shown that people dislike talking machines. If things are almost, but
not quite, human – if they exist in the “uncanny valley” between non-human and
human – they’re creepy. We want them to be one or the other.
Studies
have shown that we react better to women’s robotic voices than to men’s robotic
voices, because we find them gentler, less threatening, less bossy. I
wonder why the Rhode Island Public Transportation Authority chose men’s voices
for their buses? They sound gruff and uninterested. They remind me of the nasal
recorded voices I used to hear in Morocco in the 1980s when I rode the trains: “Mesdames et messieurs, nous sommes en
train d’arriver a Casablanca . . .”
Which brings us to Siri.
Have you ever spoken to Siri? I have. I find her rather lamebrained.
She doesn’t like being sworn at; she has lots of canned responses, like: “Such
language!” and “You shouldn’t speak to me like that!” Okay. She often
misunderstands me, even when I’m trying very hard to be understood. I ask her
for information on Puerto Rico, for example, and she’ll say something like: “Do
you want me to search the Internet for ‘What resorts are on Puerto Rico?’”
Now and then she gets it right. Ask her about the weather,
or a stock price, and she’s nearly infallible. And she’s very demure about it.
But she sounds – I don’t know – defensive when you ask her
anything off the beaten path.
Stupid robot.
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