…
“I was sincere! I wanted to tell you happy Birthday but I wanted to have AI do it.”
“Why?” I shot back, instantly annoyed.
“Because I didn’t know how to make it lengthy. Plus, it’s just easier.”
I felt as if I’d been punched in the gut. I just sat there, stunned. The last sentence repeating itself in my head.
It’s just easier. It’s just easier. It’s. Just. Easier.
…
Robert shares his experience of receiving a birthday greeting from a friend, that had clearly been written by an AI. The friend’s justification was because they’d wanted to make the message longer, more easily. But the end result was a sour taste in the recipient’s mouth.
There’s a few things wrong here. First is the assumption by the greeting’s author (and perhaps a reflection on society in general) that a longer message automatically implies more care and consideration than a shorter one. But that isn’t necessarily true (and it certainly doesn’t extend to artificially stretching a message, like you’re being paid by the word or something).
A second problem was falling back on the AI for this task in the first place. If you want to tell somebody you’re thinking of them, tell somebody you’re thinking of them. Putting an LLM between you and then introduces an immediate barrier: like telling your personal assistant to tell your friend that you’re thinking of them. It weakens the connection.
And by way of a slippery slope, you can imagine (and the technology has absolutely been there for some time now) a way of hooking up your calendar so that an AI would automatically send a birthday greeting to each of your friends, when their special day comes around, perhaps making reference to the last thing they wrote online or the last message they sent to you, by way of personalisation. By which point: why bother having friends at all? Just stick with the AI, right? It’s just easier.
Ugh.
Needless to say: like Robert, I’d far rather you just said a simple “happy birthday” than asked a machine to write me a longer, more seemingly-thoughtful message. I care more about humans than about words.
(It’s not my birthday for another month, mind.)
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