Brianna Parkins: Maybe people who won't think for themselves will start to bother AI and not us

Irish Times

a day ago

As anyone who has ever
worked in a shop
frequented by the general public will tell you, people hate using their brains. They will avoid using mental energy if they can help it in any way possible. For example, during my time as a shop assistant I was asked on more than one occasion where the socks were while standing in front of a wall of socks. Under a big sign hanging from the ceiling, which said 'Socks'.
Instead of the only socially acceptable response of laughing and going, 'What am I like, they would have bitten me ... etc,' one woman sighed impatiently and said, 'But where are the size 5-7s?!' As if I was the one slow on the uptake, when she was standing in front of a sign that read 'Sizes 5-7' in 72-point font.
These people were not vision impaired. They did not need to harangue a teenage girl stressed with the Sisyphean task of trying to pair up a mound of identical black leather lace-up shoes during the Back-to-School sale. If they had taken five minutes to give even the most cursory glance around, I wouldn't have minded. At least they would have attempted to figure it out on their own. But no, they'd march straight up to the nearest worker, even if they were 10 customers deep, to demand where to find something. No danger of using up any brain cells there.
When I sold jewellery, more than one man asked me if they should buy their future spouse's engagement ring in gold or silver. As if I, the strange woman they had just met for the first time, would know more about the preferences of the woman they shared a bed with every night. The woman they were hoping to spend the rest of their life with. 'How am I supposed to know that?' one shrugged as if this type of esoteric knowledge was lost forever when the Library of Alexandria burned.
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Instead, because it was the early days of social media, I had to scour her grainy Facebook photos taken on a 1-megapixel camera to see if her chunky heart locket was a silver or a gold looking blur. If only there was a simpler way. Like checking her jewellery box or using his eyes before he left the house to buy the most important piece of metal he would ever give to someone.
I remember wrapping up the white-gold ring and wondering if I should have slipped in a note, warning her against saying 'yes' to his proposal. I imagined her future: a lifetime of him bellowing that he could not find something in the cupboard and her having to stop what she was doing, pad into the kitchen and hiss, 'Here!' while grabbing the item that was right in front of his face.
Please don't misunderstand me. I am not anti-help. I like helping people. I'll always stop and bother to give a tourist decent directions. I've gladly lifted the front of many a pushchair to help a mum carry it down busy train station stairs. I will never begrudge help where it is needed. It is those who refuse to use even the smallest bit of brain power to help themselves that annoy me.
In the many Facebook groups I belong to, this is on full display. The wanton wasting of other people's time and attention by asking questions that should have been a private
Google search
. For example, in a group for Irish people moving to Australia it would be fine to ask, 'Which suburbs are great to live in with small children?' and, 'Can I call the police to remove a spider from the kitchen ... what if very big?'
Those are things you can only really know from experience. The village should be stepping up to help out with their collective knowledge. I would love to tell you when it's Irish week at Aldi here in Sydney, and cans of Club Orange are in the middle aisle.
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Moving to Ireland helped me understand my mother, her peculiarities and weird secrecy
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It is the anonymous members firing, 'Do I need a visa to work in Australia?' into the group that really annoys me. There are entire websites funded by taxpayers to tell you this information. Just look it up. Use some
critical thinking
, I beg you. 'Does anyone know why they won't accept my Irish prescription at the pharmacy?' Yes, I do. You've answered your own question with the word 'Irish'.
Perhaps the only good thing about
artificial intelligence
is that all the annoying people who refuse to think for themselves will start to bother it and not us with their questions. Maybe that's how we stop it from
taking our jobs
and becoming our robot overlords. It will get tired of spitting out personal training plans and simple emails for head wrecks that they could have just as easily looked up themselves, and simply choose to self-destruct.