Programming chatbots in the twilight of humanity
Alexa’s maniacal laughter wakes us in the middle of the night. Our smart thermostats, our beds and our refrigerators all spy on us. One desperate click on Amazon and that ad for flatulence-reducing tablets follows us across the Web for weeks. Who could blame humans for wanting to reconnect with a carbon-based life form, even if it is just in the customer service chat box of our cable provider?
So the idea of interacting with a chatbot as opposed to communicating with a real-live person when we’re having a machine-based problem might prove to be a font of despair so deep and wide that we might drown in it.
So: if you’re working for our robot overlords, here are a few ideas about how to ease that despair, get humans to relax—and maybe burnish your company’s image while you’re at it.
- Conjure an air of genteel respectability by choosing a name from a more refined age— like Lavender, Chadwick, Constantia, Beryl, or Theodore. Extra points if your human target starts to address the bot as “my dearest” or “companion of my heart.”
- Flair! Instead of “OK” (which almost any old bot can manage), try “okee dokee,” “you betcha,” or “10-4 good buddy.” Australian humans like “too right,” Canadian humans will warm up well to “no worries, eh?”
- Casually mention small, “human” moments. For example, have your bot drop a recommendation for the tuna melt near your user’s geo-location. “Bots don’t eat tuna melts,” your human target might fondly think. “In return for allowing me to communicate with my own species, I shall give this company scads of my personal information.”
- Never under-estimate the power of an adorable typo. “Good morinng” is just the sort of thing a recent graduate who maybe stayed out just a little too late the night before because s/he had met this interesting person from Illinois, of all places, might just make. There's something about the restless energy of the young, isn't there? We're in good hands.
- Name drop to create the impression that your bot is surrounded by other, equally human, lifeforms. “I’ve got to check that with Candace from Accounting” or “Trevor my intern is just going to look that up for you. In the meantime, how’s the weather in . . . Ponoka, Alberta?”
You'll think of others as you get good at this. Actually, your bot will think of others before you have time to get good at it. No worries, eh?
