AI and the Unhappy Society
- patricklewisbaker
- Jan 10
- 1 min read
Updated: Aug 21
Recently I had an experience that I suppose is becoming increasingly common. The large, publicly traded energy company that has taken control of gas and electric utilities in my region, replacing nine local companies, decided in July, for reasons best known to itself, to change the account numbers of some portion of its clientele, including me. I found out only because the balance associated with my old account number had remained zero for six weeks, which I knew could not be correct. Perhaps a notice had been sent to me and mysteriously turned into spam; I don’t know. Wishing, however, to pay my electric bill (which has doubled since 2020) before it got out of hand, I attempted to find out the secret of my new account number. Clicking on Help (as a rule, admittedly, a useless exercise), I was directed to a list of FAQs, none of which was germane to my question. I then tried the company’s chat and was picked up by a chatbot that was not programmed to answer my question. Despite the purported miracles of artificial intelligence, it kept referring me to the FAQs I had already consulted.
I girded my loins and attempted to contact a human being at the company by means of its customer service line…