Hubby and I detest AI with a passion. Hubby detests them because it upsets me so much that my baking suffers.

As for me, I do understand that AI can help sort out the mundane and lets a real person carry on with their real work, whatever that is. But in this 21st Century, why aren’t robots programmed better?

My phone company prides itself on “Customer Satisfaction.” I always visualized happy humans chatting with clients who had problems but these happy humans always knew the solution.

Really? To get to Customer Service and reach that “satisfaction” level, a human client has to first navigate past a Robot.

Robot: Hello–How may I help you today? Do you require “Home” or “Business?”

Me: Home please

Robot: Would you require assistance for Telephone, Internet or Cable?

Me: Telephone

Robot: What is the problem?

Me: Dead phone

Robot: Could you repeat that please? I do not understand.

Me: Phone has no connection.

Robot: I do not understand. Please repeat in simpler words.

Me: Phone. Died.

Robot: How may I help you?

Me: Need a real person

Robot: Please repeat

Me: Agent NOW

Robot: Sorry. Do you want Home or Business?

Me: AGENT

Robot: Perhaps I can help. What is your problem?

Me: AGENT ASAP

Robot: Please repeat

Me: AGENT YOU DUMBASS!

Robot: I believe you requested an agent. Is that for “Live Chat” or a call-back?

Me: CHAT YOU BLOCKHEAD!

Robot: I’m sorry. I do not understand. Please repeat.

(A heavy sigh from me . . .) Me: CHAT

Recently Hubby and I moved into the 21st Century with the installation of fibre optics and available Wifi in our home. The latest tuggle with AI was a message we discovered on the phone screen. We had a voice message. No problem. We accessed the voice mail with our usual access code. But we were stymied when a robot insisted on a second password to actually retrieve our message. Hubby and I looked at each other. Did we ever have a second password to hear our messages? Never.

This meant another call to our phone service. However, this time we chose the landline route and got into the right queue without the aid of a robot. Forty-five minutes later, we talked to a real human who understood our problem immediately. She set us up with access to our voice mail and with the option of changing the temporary password later to one we preferred.

By this time I was beginning to worry just how urgent this message was. If it turned out to be a marketing ploy, I was ready to stomp on the troublemaking message recorder and its artificial innards.

Hubby and I held our collective breaths while we made it through each successful step–tapped our usual coded access to the voice-mail; punched in our new secondary code to retrieve and finally hear our voice-mail.

A robotic voice announced: “Welcome to your new voice mail. I am the robot who will guide you through the easy steps of this tutorial to set up your new system. It will take only a few minutes of your time. Let’s begin by. . .

Welcomed to AI, whether you want it or not. It’s like waking up to a sci-fi where the robots have finally taken over the planet.