Inauguration Day Distractions

The self-checkout landscape

It all started with Yahoo mail.

A few days ago I opened a lengthy email my sister wrote to extend a lunch invitation and to inform us of a health issue distressing our brother-in-law. Above the usual text, Yahoo included something new; a summary that reduced the message to a single sentence by removing the details.

I never asked Yahoo to summarize my messages. If I had been asked, I would have declined the offer for what ought to be an astoundingly obvious reason. I don’t want Yahoo or anyone else opening and rewriting my mail. I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence.

Next was Microsoft.

This morning I opened a blank Word document and found this message at the top of the page:

Select the icon or press (command + \) to draft with Copilot.

prompting the question, what’s Copilot?

Copilot is an AI app that mysteriously took up residence on my Word menu. I didn’t ask for it. And though MS imposed it on me as an “improvement”, I was unable to say no thanks. Contacting Microsoft support through their chat facility, I discovered their support person was also unable to remove it. Apparently he too was sandbagged by the sudden appearance of Copilot. This well-meaning individual whose job is to be helpful was rendered impotent by his own employer. He was no better informed nor prepared for the launch of this intrusive AI tool than the customers he was hired to assist.

All this followed a week in which my wife and I had dropped our phone service from our Cable TV/Internet provider. They were charging us $35 a month for the service and we decided we needed the $35 dollars more than a pseudo-landline phone. But after dropping the phone component (which required enduring hours of on-hold Muzak) we we were no longer eligible for the “special package” that had included the $35 phone service. Dropping the phone moved us to a different package with slightly higher charges for our remaining internet and cable service. By dropping the phone we saved $3 a month. We were then informed that our bill would go up again as the scheduled 2025 rate would soon take effect.

When did discerning customers become a “problem” for business?

My guess is that things changed when business semantics changed. Until the mid point of the last century, business offices did their hiring and management behind a door that read “Personnel”. These were gradually removed and replaced with doors that read “Human Resources”. Persons who once made up the most valuable asset of a business were reduced to the status of paper clips. It was a reflection of a new mindset. Salaries and taxes were recategorized as liabilities, not civic duties. The concept of profit expanded from one among many measures of success to the only measure of success. The insensitivity required of individuals hired to corral employees and cut the herd when necessary, proved to be a rare quality. When the pool of heartless managers went dry, the ante was raised to sociopaths, an exceedingly rare breed that knew their worth. They demanded millions in compensation.

These days the job of a CEO is to find the most effective tools for maximizing profits. The newest corporate treasure chest pry bar is AI, a self-generating algorithm currently presented to the public as a gift to humanity. Undoubtedly, many will find its sorcery useful. Not me. I don’t want a robot controlling my own or anyone else’s content. Spell check is modest and useful, though it can also be a nuisance.

Today s Inauguration Day. And On Inauguration Day we ask, what do the politicians say about all this?

Trump won by a slim margin (1.5% over Harris’s portion of the popular vote) because he articulated anger and frustration. As a master of the form, he managed to win the day. Our job now as citizens is to double our efforts to clearly identify the real sources of our frustration, none of which have anything to do with Greenland, the Panama Canal, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, or migrants eating cats.

Here’s a few things that actually piss people off:

• 28% credit card interest

• A lack of affordable housing

• A lack of affordable health insurance

• Public figures that spend massive amounts of donor money arguing endlessly
  for and against esoteric academic preoccupations like Woke

• Major news outlets that fail to inform, and at times misinform viewers, by hewing to an entertainment model

• Social Media owners refusing to admit they’re are indeed publishers

AI is not an inherently insurmountable problem, but forcing it down our throats may soon become so.

See a theme here? A businessman just moved into the White House claiming for the second time that we need a businessman in the White House. We don’t.

We the Human Resources of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, require renewed recognition as persons.