IS JOHN A ROBOT?

More calls today. Only this one, from an unknown number, was ringing in my headphones. Siri read out the number and asked as usual, whether I wanted to answer it.

I normally don’t, but I figured it might be to do with the house.

“Hi,” said a flat, monotone voice, “My name is John. We’re doing a review of properties in your area and we’ve found you may have insufficient loft insulation. Would you like to find out more?” Each syllable was odd, as though it had been recorded and stitched together - with all the emphases in slightly the wrong place. This is where we’re going, I thought to myself.

“Sorry, could you repeat that?” I asked.

“Hi,” said the flat, monotone voice, “My name is John. We’re doing a review of properties in your area and we’ve found you may have insufficient loft insulation. Would you like to find out more?”

I simmered on the inside, just quietly. Every single tone was the same.

“You’re not a real person are you John?” I asked, quietly. I didn’t know what to expect after I’d said that. I figured that question was a pretty good one as a kind of Turing Test. Human or computer? How John responded ought to tell me everything.

John chuckled and explained that he was reading from a script. Of course he was! This new voice, this free-flowing John was suddenly making a connection with me - how silly that he, sat in a miserable contact centre, had had to read from a script that made him sound like a robot, and how wonderful that someone on the other end of the line had punctured it with reality, instead of going along with the silly game. He knew it; I knew it. I breathed a very human sigh of relief.

“I mean I guess you must have read that out thousands of times eh John?” I babbled. “Honestly, you repeated it so perfectly, I was totally fooled. Anyway, John, thanks for calling. How are you?”

I often ask people how they are. It’s open-ended enough for them to segué into whatever they need to talk to me about. I was connected with the real John, and it’s my opinion that things go well with people whenever you’ve made and established that connection. How are you? seems like an excellent thing to say.

“Many people have insufficient loft insulation, and don’t know that it could be costing them thousands on heating due to the inefficiency of certain types of mat…”

No, no, John! I thought. What happened? Why are you back to reading that out like some sort of terminator? Where’s the real John? Where’s my camaraderie against all the silliness? Turned to the dark side! Come back!

“… and can be tough to replace. Do you have that type of insulation in your loft, sir.” - literally not a question. It was as though a computer had input the text and forgotten the question mark, but read it out anyway, without understanding from the context that it was a question. Flat, monotone, artificial. Robotic.

“John,” I sighed. “I am sorry. You’re reading from a script, and I just don’t want to talk to you.”

I hung up before John could respond. We’ve got enough going on without our loft having the wrong type of insulation! I had no qualms about disconnecting the connection I’d made with John. Though I do feel a bit sorry for him.

I imagined John’s superiors playing the tape back in front of him, berating him for deviating from the approved script, showing his real self when they need him to be corporate, efficient, indistinguishable. Poor John.

But then the thought occurred to me that soon, artificial intelligence will be so well developed that it will almost be impossible to tell John apart from a computer. What if, in real-time, an AI voice could chat with you about Eastenders, or comment drolly on the weather, or express sympathy that your kitchen got flooded, and really sound like it means it?

Is that wonderful, or terrifying? Is that the future? Not just passing the Test but leaving it for dust - indistinguishable ‘human’ voices on the end of the telephone? Could I make a genuine human connection with a robot, and never even realise?

And. Has that already happened? Is Rico real? What about Katie, and Terry, and Calvin, and John?

This is the kind of thought that doesn’t do me any good. I must choose the most generous explanation - and for now, that is that John was real, and his reading voice was oddly mechanical. Rico and the others are real too, I’m sure of it. But even if they’re not, they’re all still helping us, one way or the other.

Sometimes I wonder whether all this advancement in technology is simply new and inventive methods of separating humans from talking to each other face-to-face. The telephone, the internet, social media, perhaps even AI now too, all isolating us under the pretence of a more connected world. Forget the illuminati! It was them robots all along.

I think I might go out and get a cup of tea now, made by a person who smiles, and (he adds cynically but hopefully humorously) while I still can.