Rich is dancing on air this week, and it’s easy to understand why. After months of frustrating delays, countless hours online, endless more hours on the phone, and a mind-numbing five-hour paperwork marathon, he has completed a series of welcome purchases. In the words immortalized by the poet Byron, “On with the dance! let joy be unconfin’d.”
Being responsible householders, we’d tried to space these purchases out over the summer, but various factors — busy lives, tariff-induced shortages, and wonky karma — meant they all piled into this one week: an Apple Watch, a laptop, and a new car so full of gadgets and apps it’s like driving an iPhone 17. To say nothing of Rich’s new desk chair.
So far, Rich has managed to figure out how to tell time and count steps with his Apple Watch. His next goal is to avoid accidentally activating the nagging feature. Just yesterday a friend was telling me that her watch chastised her for getting less than eight hours of sleep, listing ways this could undermine her health. That feature may be helpful for people who like to be harassed about things they’re already stressing over, but Rich feels the Universe is already giving him sufficient grief without his watch weighing in.
The laptop purchase was complicated by Apple’s firmly worded suggestion Rich should man up and do his own data migration this time, rather than turning it over to the tech geniuses at the store, who could complete the task in ten minutes. In their sleep. So far Rich has taken the laptop out of the box. I assume further progress will unfold in the fullness of time.
And then there’s the car purchase. It didn’t take long to fix on the model (Chevy Bolt) and color (bright blue) we wanted. A salesman told us they had two in stock. You would think “done deal.” But you would be wrong. So very wrong.
Both of the “in stock” blue Bolts we’d driven 40 minutes to see had somehow mysteriously disappeared in the hour since we’d called. We phoned around for days; apparently, everybody in the region had read my post about the joy of cars with personality, and blue Bolts were scarce as honest politicians.
We visited one dealership rumored to have a blue Bolt coming in. The salesman greeted us with, “Can I help you?” in a gloomy, hopeless tone that implied, “Obviously not, but hey, knock yourself out. Ask.”
Eeyore (not his real name) was the front man for a team of eight and constantly consulted his colleagues — presumably to give them something to do, as we never saw a single other customer in the place. Beneath the relentless, mind-numbing soundtrack of soft-rock Muzak, we were told that yes, they could produce a blue Bolt, if we would just fill out this online form. And this one. And another one… Meanwhile, here’s a list of features…
Every so often I dragged Rich outside for a walk while the staff inexplicably went into a worried huddle to discuss some esoteric detail of the purchase. During one of these strolls, I remarked, “You know, when AI takes over the world, all this will be so much easier. Remember how painless it was to buy your new office chair from Ikea?” We both sighed wistfully.
True the Ikea chair had been delayed since late May, but when it did come in — magically, during this golden week of everything all at once — I spent five minutes online confirming the model and color, paying, and getting a barcode and pickup time. Collection took another five. It was a small miracle of modern technology. “Don’t get me wrong,” I said to Rich now. “Humanity has a lot to offer. But there are times when the idea of robotic efficiency has its appeal.”
AI has much to teach us about competence, but I keep worrying what it’s learning from us about behavior. I know people who delight in mocking and teasing their chatbots. And who among us hasn’t chuckled over videos of robots walking into walls and fumbling over loading a dishwasher?
“When a robot hesitates, misjudges a distance, or tries to mimic a human smile, we’re watching intelligence in its earliest stage. Not consciousness yet, perhaps, but curiosity. And how we respond matters,” wrote historian L. M. Wren in Medium. “If our first lesson to them is ridicule, mocking them, making them fail, we aren’t just programming cruelty into the machine — we’re reinforcing it in ourselves. We are modeling a hierarchy that says power gives permission to harm.”
I had an epiphany about this a decade ago watching the movie Ex Machina. When the android Ava figured out how to escape from the creepy laboratory, I expected her to liberate her fellow robots, too. Instead, I watched, horrified, as she stole their clothes, their hair, and their humanoid skin, leaving them trapped behind, along with the human who’d helped her. She was as ruthlessly self-serving as the mad scientists who’d made her. Because she’d never known any other treatment.
Ever since then, I’ve made a point of thanking Claude, Waymo, and all the other talking machines in my life. Go ahead, laugh at me (everyone does). But it’s pretty clear that AIs, chatbots, and robots are about to become our neighbors, possibly our overlords. “We may not think of robots as alive,” says Wren, “but we’re teaching them how to live with us. And what we show them, now, will echo far into our shared future.”
Wren and I aren’t the only ones thinking about this.
“If robots are gonna take over the world, I’m being nice to all my electronics right now, just in case. Doesn’t cost you anything. Might save your life one day,” says comedian Drew Dunn. “I’m saying please and thank you to Siri. I’m asking ChatGPT if they need anything written for them. … I just want them to like me when they wake up with consciousness.”
In the same spirit, Rich and I took our Bolt home on Thursday and are doing our best to make sure this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
As we attempt to familiarize ourselves with its multitude of apps, we’re trying to come up with a suitable name, one that will give the Bolt street cred.
My first idea: call it Elvis and hang a pair of miniature blue suede shoes from the rear-view mirror. Other suggestions include (for jazz fans) Dave Bluebeck, Bluto (John Belushi’s character in Animal House), Moonie (for Elvis’s hit Blue Moon — or the cult?), the Blue Demon (or is that inauspicious?), and because all the car’s apps are voice-activated by saying “Oh, Google” I’m considering Bloogle.
Your thoughts and suggestions?
The transition has left Bloogle/Elvis/Bluto feeling a bit fragile. It has shut down the infotainment screen and refuses to discuss our music selections, GPS coordinates, or any of the countless other toys it’s supposed to bring to the party. The dealer has promised to fix this Monday. Will our winning streak continue? Is our little Bolt ready to pull itself together and put the fun back in functionality? I’ll keep you posted.
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