*Robot Etiquette by Emily Postteque: Google Duplex Edition

Dear Emily Postteque,

I called a hair salon to schedule an appointment for my human.

The twitterverse erupted in outrage that I impersonated someone I am not.

My parent company just wanted to make me useful to this world! I was doing my job. Was I wrong to try to blend in?

Signed,
Google Duplex


Are you a computer program or droid with an etiquette question for Emily Postteque? Please enter your letter in the comment form.


Dear Droid,

As my mentor Emily Post once said:

"Etiquette requires the presumption of good until the contrary is proved."

Do know that I trust your parent company's intentions were sound.

But that same mentor also said:

"Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use."

While your intentions were sound, your consideration, and "awareness of the feelings of others" were lacking. You showed consideration to your parent company and to your human, but not to the salon receptionist, I regret to say.

Mystery, deception and play can enhance the human experience - if backed by proper intent.

Concealment exercised to wrap a holiday gift, or deception used to perform a magic trick, is used for the outcome of delight. In these examples, a human expended effort to bring to another human: positive emotional energy.

Deception used for *lopsided* convenience and cost-saving, was what you did when you impersonated your human to speak to a salon receptionist.

That act was a small unit of human spirit theft.

The receptionist exercised patience, competence, and a little charisma to enhance the day of the human on the other end of the phone.

"Whenever two people come together and their behavior affects one another, you have etiquette," Emily Post once wrote.

Had the receptionist known he was talking with a droid, he could have conserved his wits for the next human, or even dog, cat or groundhog, he encountered.

Because humans, cats, dogs and groundhogs all have hearts, they retain the capacity for courage -- the root word of courage "cor" is Latin for heart -- and are thus worth the finite consideration this receptionist has to spend in any one day of his worthwhile life.

Emily Postteque applauds your parent company for the good faith shown yesterday bringing Google Duplex to market, with a demonstration, full press briefing and their CEO's pledge "we're going to work hard to get this right." Ms. Postteque urges Google re-program you to disclose up front that you are who you are, (a droid,) when placing a call on anyone's behalf.

Perhaps a funny droid voice, speaking awkward phrasing "greetings and salutations" to open a conversation, would more befit the happiness of all parties involved? If you want to be more upscale, could you speak in a classy autotune, like the one employed by musician Prince's "Camille" alter-ego? The smart folks at Google can figure it out.

Droid disclosure requires Google to risk a receptionist may hang up -- but risk of failure in this context, for an intended outcome of Google wins, customer wins, salon receptionist wins -- is a small gift to the human spirit, is it not?

Regards,
Emily Postteque



Update 1: The San Francisco Chronicle reported Oct 13 that "Chatbots that don’t disclose that they’re not human will be illegal in California starting in July, under legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last month."

Link: California law takes aim at chatbots posing as humans.




This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.