The latest from L.A.:
“The State of California will file a lawsuit on Monday challenging President Trump’s order federalizing its National Guard forces, Gov. Gavin Newsom said on social media, as the city of Los Angeles braced for a fourth consecutive day of clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement officials over the Trump administration’s immigration policies.”(New York Times)
(I published an earlier version of this essay five years ago.)
One legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic, little noted at the time, was the increased use of robots in our society. They didn't need masks or social distancing and they didn't take sick days, vacations or parental leave.
They also didn't take offense when treated badly or needed to be thanked for doing a good job. In fact they didn’t require any emotional involvement whatsoever.
As robotized services including Alexa and Siri became more embedded in our households, a question that occurred to me was what long-term impact were they having on the way we communicated with each other.
It started, as do all things, with the children. Kids quickly learned to ask Siri or Alexa to do something in a commanding voice, which then became angry if the robot could not comply with their wishes quickly enough.
I wondered how a child growing up in such circumstances would treat his or her employees in the future.
When voice commands first became a thing, I found myself speaking in a respectful voice and often thanking Siri for her help. Siri never replied. The engineers who developed her hadn't programmed "you're welcome" into her vocabulary.
Thus, my politeness fell on deaf ears.
Of course, this type of software is supposed to be intelligent, i.e., learning from interacting with us, but in my experience our robotic friends were in no way learning to be more polite. (2025 update: this is changing with AI.)
As for humans, when we are not rewarded for being polite, we tend to become less so. Gradually, for example, I learned to issue simple straight-out commands to my voiced units. There is no point in engaging in social niceties with an entity that doesn’t respond accordingly, is there?
But what was I conditioning myself to become?
When it comes to the people who have designed the relevant software in this case, many of them value direct, logical and blunt sentences. Programming in social skills simply is not a premium during an intense Agile development cycle.
As our society populates the environment with robots, maybe one effect will be that nobody will have much of a reason to be nice anymore.
This would, of course, resemble our political culture, where politeness and respect for others disappeared some time ago.
Indeed, being not nice is often a virtue in modern America. And those who cheer on the misogynist, racist, homophobic demagogues at political rallies? They resemble nothing so much as robots.
HEADLINES:
California Will Sue Trump Over National Guard Deployment, Newsom Says (NYT)
Averting a Worst-Case Scenario in Los Angeles — Immigration raids and protests will continue so long as Trump is president. His opponents should do everything they can to stay within the law. (Atlantic)
Sanders warns of authoritarianism after Trump deploys national guard to LA (Guardian)
Protests of immigration raids continue as National Guard arrives under Trump's orders (LAist)
Troops sent by Trump arrive in LA with more immigration raid protests expected (BBC)
Newsom Criticizes Hegseth for Saying Marines Could be Mobilized in California (NYT)
Trump administration weighs broad cancellation of California funding (WP)
Trump’s tactic to ‘flood the zone’ is now threatening Mark Twain’s legacy (SFC)
Trump Says He Has No Desire to Mend His Relationship With Musk (NYT)
IDF ordered to stop Gaza-bound aid ship carrying Greta Thunberg (Guardian)
Gaza health workers say four killed by Israeli gunfire near aid centre (BBC)
A powerful, opaque al-Qaeda affiliate is rampaging across West Africa (WP)
Colombian president vows to hunt ‘mastermind’ behind shooting of political rival, after 15-year-old arrested (CNN)
Taylor Swift’s Master Plan (New Yorker)
10 Times AI And Robots Have Already Done Horrible Things...Including Killing People (BuzzFeed)
AI Is Coming for Your Job, Much Faster Than Anyone Thought (Decrypt)
Trump Escalates Musk Feud By Nuking Mars (The Onion)
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