“They are utterly, utterly loathsome,” Linda in Surrey told presenter Shari Vahl. “I hate them.”
What quickly emerged was the gap between the promise of AI and the reality – a frustrating, unhelpful alternative to human customer service. Linda was so exasperated she had started asking for a Hobbit every time she used a chatbot.
“A Hobbit?” Vahl checked. “Small with furry feet?”
“Yes,” Linda confirmed. Give a chatbot a word it doesn’t recognise and it’s more likely to transfer you to a human, it turns out.
Radio 4’s consumer programme is one of those hardy perennials in the radio calendar that is easy to overlook. It can at times feel a bit Sunday supplement. That said, finding a dentist or inadequate holiday insurance can have the same kind of impact on our lives as Donald Trump and John Swinney.
Read more Teddy Jamieson
Driving to pick up my grandson on Tuesday morning I admit I tuned in by accident, but this was a fascinating hour-long broadcast very ably fronted by Vahl who is both assured and empathetic.
What came across was the frustration for customers that they can’t speak to a real-life person anymore. In fact, it seems this is deliberate on the part of some companies. Partly it is down to cost – humans are more expensive than chatbots to run. Partly it is down to an increasing number of customer queries. One commentator, who works for the German company Zendesk, which makes AI-powered software for customer services, revealed that they have seen three times as many customer enquiries over the last three years.
Some of that increase, he added, can be put down to the increased use of technology.
As Dominic, parked up on the outskirts of Droitwich, pointed out, we are basically at ground zero when it comes to AI. It will improve, he said. As he works in the AI field himself you might think he would say that. But for the moment even Dominic is keener to speak to people.
“We just haven’t found the best way to utilise it yet and that’s the problem,” he said of AI.
There is clearly still some way to go. Vahl read out a text from one listener describing her interaction with a funeral plan company: “The chatbot simply couldn’t understand the phrase: ‘My mother has died.’”
Anyway, talking of Hobbits … Reading Journeys on Radio 4 offered a real listening pleasure this week. Each morning from Monday to Friday Scottish author AL Kennedy took us on a series of excursions into her own history as a reader, starting with, yes, JRR Tolkien.
AL Kennedy
“Stories were my first journeys,” Kennedy told listeners. “My first home, Middle Earth. No harm to seagull-pestered cold and rainy Dundee, grey and multiply-deprived as it was in the early seventies. Middle Earth just seemed nicer, even as Mordor loomed.
“It didn’t have power cuts or mum and dad fighting or arithmetic. The shire had small people, Hobbits, who could save a world.”
I must admit I’ve always found Tolkien largely unreadable. But Kennedy was a beguiling and convincing advocate for his work. Lord of the Rings was, she admitted, too scary for her when she was a girl, but now she sees it as a lesson from history.
“It tells us not to reach for ultimate power because it holds ultimate corruption,” Kennedy explained. “Not to try defeating monsters by becoming monsters and therefore leaving the world to monsters no matter who wins.”
Tolkien, she said, was “a World One survivor writing during World War Two,” who thought, “this was the story he should tell; a tale of hard choices and getting each other through.”
Dear reader, it almost made me think I should give Tolkien another go.
Wednesday’s episode, meanwhile, reminded me that I also still haven’t read Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, which, Kennedy has now convinced me, is a big mistake on my part. Lanark, she explained, is “560 pages of wonder.”
All in all, this series was a wonderful reminder of the joy of human interaction. Oh, and now, thanks to Kennedy, I know Robert Louis Stevenson’s character should be pronounced Dr Jeekyll, not Jekyll.
Listen Out For: Sontag on Photography, Radio 4 Extra, Saturday, March 15, 9pm
A worthwhile reminder that 4 Extra is not just for old comedy repeats. This 1978 programme sees essayist Susan Sontag talk to film critic and radio producer Philip French about her book On Photography. Don’t tell me I don’t know how to spend a Saturday night.