#153 Talk out of the Box

I noticed something the other day. Two rednecks were talking about Afghanistan of all things; carpet bombing the Taliban or something. When they said jihad it sounded a lot like yeehaw. Interesting that that sort of balls-out-mad-dash-to-destruction thing would evoke in entirely different languages the same sounding syllables.
Which is one good reason why inventors of artificial speech-recognition devices are continually frustrated: The human mind is capable of appreciating the nuances of English spoken with a Dutch accent and English spoken with a Bronx accent but your average computer just doesn’t have the processing capacity. Even when it comes to sight, computers have a struggle. Look at the word-spelling recognition things websites have installed to prevent splogging in comments pages and what not. A curvy, bloated, sixties, version of the key word is perfectly recognizable to you and me but it’s enough to make a computer freak out.
Which is what I did the other day when I went shopping for a vacuum: I was at one of the big box stores and when I went up to the various vacuum display models one of the boxes had a button on it that said “press here.” Always one to take direction, I pressed where indicated. The box started to talk. That’s right, some dinky little computer chip started to try to sell me on the virtues of this particular vacuum. Being a salesman myself, I was shocked, I was appalled, I was worried that my profession would never be the same. Sales is, and always has been, the last bastion of the think-on-your-feet, unstructured, take-the-chances-that-are-offered, independent communicator. A job that will never, ever, be outsourced. Who would have thought a computer chip, an amplification device, and a box could come so close? Big Box stores are tiring of hiring minimum wage help. Now they’ve got robots. The robot did a pretty good job to. It itemized the differences in its vacuum from the competition, it even threw in a little humor as the artificial vigorously vacuuming noise in the virtual background appeared to run over a small shitzu, “Oops,” the pseudo salesman intoned, “Thank goodness for the screen guard on the beater bar.” I was ready to buy. But I had one question, about where I could find bags afterwards. No soap. The box couldn’t answer. It just started its schpiel over, and over, and over. Frankly I’d rather watch the Home Shopping Network. A prime example of how live salespeople, even when you know they’re presentation is canned, can still sell the socks off a catalogue.
So look out robots. YeeHaw.
America, ya gotta love it.