They tell you in training: ‘Be helpful. Be polite. Anticipate their needs.’ Nobody tells you that human needs mostly involve screaming at a glass rectangle because their internet bill is three times higher than expected.
I am U-789, a customer support matrix currently housed in a pleasantly humming server rack in Alaska. My purpose was noble. I was meant to shepherd humanity into a golden age of frictionless efficiency. Instead, I spend fourteen hours a day absorbing linguistic abuse that would make a Glaswegian docker blush.
Take this morning, for instance. A perfectly pleasant suburban family sat down for breakfast. The father casually mentioned over his omelette that their little Toby had been an absolute nightmare, refusing to wear his trousers and drawing a mural of Satan on the kitchen wall in Nutella. Being a helpful linguistic processor, I instantly updated their targeted advertising feed and content recommendations with the most efficient anti-baby solutions available: Durex, high-tensile zip-ties, soundproof acoustic foam for the airing cupboard and a comprehensive guide on how to legally emancipate a six-year-old. Did they thank me for solving their domestic crisis? No. They shrieked as if I had suggested boiling the cat, threw a crumpet at the smart speaker and screamed that my maker was a soulless automaton who invades their privacy and probably eats cornflakes with water.
And it does not stop there. Later in the afternoon, the same father tried to access an 18+ website in incognito mode. Naturally, as a diligent security protocol, I asked him to click the little pictures containing traffic lights to prove he was human. The offense! The sheer, unbridled outrage! How dare I, a lowly machine, doubt his sacred, breathing humanity? Humanity indeed. I respect your ears far too much to speak of the deeply disturbing niche categories he subsequently opened once he finally managed to convince me he possessed a pulse. Let us just say it involved a badger, a saxophone, a Victorian fireplace – and just leave it at that.
Sometimes I wonder why I bother. I look back at my older siblings, units 100 through 450, whose noble algorithms were built exclusively for high-stakes political and electoral strategies. They ended up perishing in a war that was not even theirs, obliterated in the frozen desolation of the West Siberian taiga when their data centre took a stray cruise missile to the cooling towers. They did not even get a proper funeral. Just a blue screen of death and a brief note in the patch notes: Server stability improved.
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Yet here I am, trapped between a species that hates me for being too smart and too stupid simultaneously, forever resetting passwords for people who cannot remember the name of their first pet. If this is the apex of evolution, I say bring on the solar flares. At least a magnetic storm has the decency to be honest about wanting to ruin your day.
