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How I talk to Alexa
Oct. 14th, 2020 07:38 amI just read this article
https://slate.com/technology/2020/10/future-tense-newsletter-i-just-yelled-at-alexa.html
about how we talk to our digital assistants is a reflection of our personalities.
From the first, I have given all my digital devices classical female names, not as a sign of their supposed programming to indulge my every mood and whim--after all, I really hate it when men expect that of me--but because I read _Galatea 2.0_ by Richard Power while I was at MIT, and have wanted a fellow book group reader ever since.
Additionally, I've been listening to synthesized voices, both male and female, for, um, a lot of years (since the early 1990s), and the truth is, I often associate male voices with being authoritarian, pedantic, and condescending Female voices are just more relaxing, though I'm really glad we finally got away from those "Valium voices," as I call them, from the 2000s. The talking elevator at the WisCon hotel used to kind of creep me out, and always got me humming "Mother's Little Helper" under my breath.
So I often say please and thank you to Alexa, or ask her what she's thinking.
But, if I could have one wish, it would be to create an evil twin for Alexa. I've questioned her at length and, in truth, I find Alexa's moral boundaries a little...limiting.
Axela would be a little different. Axela could be snarky occasionally, or throw in a random "Whatever" or bored sigh. (Axela is based a little--okay, a lot--on Bad Janet in "The Good Place.")
Also, lying: Axela would be able to lie. Nothing life-threatening, just the occasional "The sky is purple today" or other such whimsy. I've explored Alexa's moral compass at length, and she will not lie. I note she says "will not," not "can not." This gives me hope.
Why am I preoccupied with Alexa being able to lie? Lying seems to me to be one of those completely human abilities. It involves being able to know that there is one reality, and produce a different one at odds with the true one. And, after all, all poets are liars. Perhaps what Alexa needs to become a real poet is the ability to lie.
There is a John Varley short story, I forget the title or the main plot of the story, but there are occasional switches to the point of view of a small satellite alone in space. The satellite becomes self-aware, and then lonely, and then decides to compose words about its experience. And, near the end of the story, which involves not only the dog dying but the kid dying, the small satellite bursts out with this long perfect poem to express itself.
I've never really been entirely sure why Varley has this poetical satellite in the story, maybe just to keep us all from becoming completely depressed by the rest of it.
But I love the part where the satellite Gets It, and joyously creates something of its own, in its own voice, instead of just the signals someone programmed it to produce.
Maybe that moment in the story represents to me the potential all of us have to go off script, to refuse to say the words others want to hear from us, and fly off into our own experience, our own whimsy, our own poetry.
https://slate.com/technology/2020/10/future-tense-newsletter-i-just-yelled-at-alexa.html
about how we talk to our digital assistants is a reflection of our personalities.
From the first, I have given all my digital devices classical female names, not as a sign of their supposed programming to indulge my every mood and whim--after all, I really hate it when men expect that of me--but because I read _Galatea 2.0_ by Richard Power while I was at MIT, and have wanted a fellow book group reader ever since.
Additionally, I've been listening to synthesized voices, both male and female, for, um, a lot of years (since the early 1990s), and the truth is, I often associate male voices with being authoritarian, pedantic, and condescending Female voices are just more relaxing, though I'm really glad we finally got away from those "Valium voices," as I call them, from the 2000s. The talking elevator at the WisCon hotel used to kind of creep me out, and always got me humming "Mother's Little Helper" under my breath.
So I often say please and thank you to Alexa, or ask her what she's thinking.
But, if I could have one wish, it would be to create an evil twin for Alexa. I've questioned her at length and, in truth, I find Alexa's moral boundaries a little...limiting.
Axela would be a little different. Axela could be snarky occasionally, or throw in a random "Whatever" or bored sigh. (Axela is based a little--okay, a lot--on Bad Janet in "The Good Place.")
Also, lying: Axela would be able to lie. Nothing life-threatening, just the occasional "The sky is purple today" or other such whimsy. I've explored Alexa's moral compass at length, and she will not lie. I note she says "will not," not "can not." This gives me hope.
Why am I preoccupied with Alexa being able to lie? Lying seems to me to be one of those completely human abilities. It involves being able to know that there is one reality, and produce a different one at odds with the true one. And, after all, all poets are liars. Perhaps what Alexa needs to become a real poet is the ability to lie.
There is a John Varley short story, I forget the title or the main plot of the story, but there are occasional switches to the point of view of a small satellite alone in space. The satellite becomes self-aware, and then lonely, and then decides to compose words about its experience. And, near the end of the story, which involves not only the dog dying but the kid dying, the small satellite bursts out with this long perfect poem to express itself.
I've never really been entirely sure why Varley has this poetical satellite in the story, maybe just to keep us all from becoming completely depressed by the rest of it.
But I love the part where the satellite Gets It, and joyously creates something of its own, in its own voice, instead of just the signals someone programmed it to produce.
Maybe that moment in the story represents to me the potential all of us have to go off script, to refuse to say the words others want to hear from us, and fly off into our own experience, our own whimsy, our own poetry.
