It’s not all that hard to trip up Artificial Intelligence software.  I know, because I’ve done it.

The first time, all I had to do was ask the online chat bot, “Are you a robot or a human?”  After a minute-and-a-half of total silence, I then asked, “Did I stump you?” To which, the “representative” replied, “No, you didn’t stump me.  Ask me anything.”

Yeah, right.

To be fair, I already knew I was dealing with AI because it was a beta test, but still … Unless a human representative suddenly decided to take a 90-second bathroom break or spilled hot coffee onto his or her lap, I don’t think there would have been  that lapse in the conversation.

The second time, I didn’t actually stump AI, but I did get some serious misinformation which could potentially have landed me in a hospital had I depended on it.  As most of my readers know, I have a history of ulcerative colitis and am somewhat limited in what I can eat.  After being on Remicade for 12 years, and being currently in remission (sort of), I’ve begun adding certain foods, like lettuce, tomatoes, and fresh mushrooms, to my diet.  But I still can’t eat very dense foods like nuts, raw carrots, raw celery, etc.  Those would cause a flare which could result in serious intestinal bleeding.  Also on my no-no list are nuts and high-fiber products like whole grain breads or pulpy fruits like oranges or grapefruit.

Of course, my primary doctor is well aware of my condition, as are his staff and nurses.  So, imagine my surprise when (after blood test results showed a slight inbalance in certain values) I received a message allegedly from my doctor urging me to increase my consumption of nuts, fresh raw veggies (like carrots), and high-fiber breads and fruits.  Naturally, I complained to the doctor’s staff, who assured me I could ignore the message because it was automatically generated by AI based on the blood test results.  Since I was not in a particularly good mood that day, I more or less politely suggested that someone in the doctor’s office might want to review those messages before sending them to patients.

While AI certainly has its advantages, especially for industrial and scientific applications, I think too many people are relying on it in their personal lives.

Recently, I came across an article in CNET discussing AI-managed personal budgets.

Say what?

I’ve been balancing my income vs expenses for 56 years and have managed to do so with pen and paper, and later with an Excel spreadsheet.  It’s not that hard.  There’s only so much income from which to pay those expenses.  Heck, Puppy Cody could probably create a budget for my household.

Should I ever come into a lot of money and suddenly be faced with a complicated financial situation like investments or inheritance taxes, I’m not likely to purchase AI budgeting software.  At that point, I would hire an accountant or financial advisor and let them deal with the headaches.

However, what really struck me in the CNET article was that the budgeting software requires the user to input specific questions (and most people don’t know what questions to ask) – which reminded me of the early days of computers when DOS was king and instructions were relayed to the computer via the C:/ prompt.

The user had to be very careful about the wording that followed the C:/ prompt.  I once wanted to delete an entire paragraph of text, so I typed C:/DELETE ALL.  Thankfully, a co-worker was training me on the computer that very day, and she stopped me before I hit ENTER.  For those who don’t know, back then “DELETE ALL” would have wiped out everything on the computer system, and both my trainer and I would have been fired immediately.

In the next few days (or weeks or months, depending on how lazy I am), I plan to post some other stories from my early computer days (who remembers magnetic tapes?).

Meanwhile, you might enjoy this previous post about men doing naughty web-surfing: Hot Browsing.  It still makes me laugh.

Until then –

Hugs, all.

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I love to hear from my readers. You may comment on this post or email me at cordeliasmom2012@yahoo.com
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Images by Cordelia’s Mom/TeddyRosalieStudio