Kathryn Bishop, CBE, who has co-authored* “Board Talk” with Gillian Camm, recently shared an experience. In doing some research she asked ChatGPT a question and the tool responded with “Excellent question!” It felt patronising, she said.
Her post reminded me of a delightful book titled “Um…” that Michael Erard wrote almost 20 years ago. I still have it. Amazon tells me I bought it in 2007 and I had reviewed it then as a lovely book for the pedant in some or more of us. He speaks of disfluencies and explores the meaning of other verbal tics.
I can however relate to Kathryn’s finding “excellent question” a bit patronising especially since the interaction seems personal between oneself and the computer screen. I have certainly rolled my eyes about the recorded message “please accept my apology“, always in a woman’s voice too, on my train station tannoy for delayed or cancelled trains. “I do not want a damned apology from a recording“, I grumble to nobody in particular. On the other hand, when one of the two gents, who work at the station ticket counter, makes the announcement, I feel better about the same cancellation or delay. A human told me, his apology seemed genuine, and sometimes the tone of his voice may even feel like he shares our frustration as passengers.
Another book came to mind — “Everybody Lies” by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. It draws upon the intimacy many web users feel with their computers, and in that intimate space, they ask some pretty interesting questions. I highly recommend that book. I cite things from it to annoy people or to amuse people at the rare dinner parties, where people still talk about books.
Then again we hear the phrase “excellent question” in our board meetings too. And as the human colleague, who says it, is sitting across us, we can observe their body language and their playing with their pen or their shifting in their chair, and we know that the phrase is a conversational place-holder and buys them time to arrange their thoughts before they verbalise them.
This liminal space, where machines are becoming ubiquitous in our lives but where our human OS has not changed sufficiently for us to not react emotionally to the machine’s “behaviour”, is quite fascinating.
For these are the kinds of Uncharted Spaces we are all navigating together. Unpacking them can make us feel less alone and more connected to other humans.
In the comments on Kathryn’s post, my friend Sarah Langslow, who is the author** of “Do Sweat the Small Stuff“, says she feels the output from an LLM tool is better if she is polite. She would say that, of course. She is English. The English are the model of politeness.
But a Penn State short research paper finds it works better if you are rude in your tone.
We truly are in Uncharted Spaces but it is in our power to determine where we all choose to go. Human First, I’d posit, is the way forward.
*Board Talk is available at all good bookstores and is published by Practical Inspiration Publishing, also my publisher.
** Do Sweat the Small Stuff is also published by Practical Inspiration Publishing, and is available at all good bookstores.
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