Of either a movie’s plot point or an economic talking point, automation repeatedly injects itself into our daily lives, and never seemingly in a good way. Charlie’s dad lost his job when the toothpaste factory created a machine to install the caps. Mr. Wipple destroyed his and his employees’ purpose and livelihoods by replacing every person with a machine. Interstellar wars became fully dehumanized after soldiers were replaced with bioengineered human facsimiles. And here at Easement Acres, infrastructure repair work orders become hindered by inaccurate reports.
AES, our local electrical company, decided to wage war on neighborhood trees, after having been called out for their inflated prices and subsequently ordered to refund their customer base some arbitrary percentage. I conclude that this triggered a scrambling to perform publicly-observable work to justify the price increases, which always seems to culminate in destroying peoples’ yards with lowest-bidder hired itinerant subcontractors. Knowing the demographic of my own neighborhood, I’m somewhat surprised that ICE didn’t make an appearance.
So after an afternoon of chainsaw-fu taking place, my internet cut out – conveniently timed with a sudden exodus of the aforementioned subcontractors from my property. As annoyance yielded to curiosity, having been now prevented from completing any additional office work for the day, I deduced what might have been the problem:
Yes, the cable line, including its protective conduit, had been severed completely.
An irritated call to my internet provider, Spectrum, (not that it was their fault), suggested that I might remedy the problem by rebooting my modem. Apparently that might magically fuse the line back together. I told the agent that the line had been cut, as I was rebooting the modem. He pointed out to me that he still wasn’t seeing a connection to my modem. I asked for a field tech to come out. He was able to dispatch one at 8AM the next morning.
Following this initial exchange, Spectrum felt the need to call me twice more, saying they couldn’t send anyone out. I reiterated that the problem was a cut line. The agents verbally acknowledged this.
In the meantime, having been forced offline, I began to ponder what the fix would require. The cable just needed to be spliced back together. Also, I had the tools to do so, having previously run coax through my attic and walls in order to attach a digital antenna to the TVs. How hard could it be?
The answer, as it would turn out, is: not very. Although I obviously didn’t posses the proper connectors required for outdoor waterproof applications, it wasn’t raining and a fix was better than no fix. I rummaged through my wire boxes and procured two twist terminations and a connector.
Crisis averted for the moment.
The next morning, a field tech arrived and notified me that he’s here to diagnose my modem. I told him the problem was a cut wire, and that I could not only show him where, but that I was certain it was the problem because my temporary fix had restored the internet. It was at this point that he informed me that customer calls are notated by AI, and that agents themselves can’t actually add notes. Not only had they turned over basic work order documentation to automation, but also prevented human intervention. This resulted in completely inaccurate information.
This goes well beyond basic outsourcing, which often has proven problematic due to language barriers and cultural differences. How AI is intended to supersede all human to human interactions is, I think, still a tad ambitious. Although, when I myself worked in a call center, I half-jokingly reflected on humanity’s historical relationship with indentured servitude with my peers, and that our job only existed for us because it couldn’t be forced upon others to do for free; and additionally, if it couldn’t legally be done with slave labor, it was still cheaper to pay us to do it than design and maintain a machine to.
Ambitious or not, demonstrated by my interaction with Spectrum, it’s nonetheless becoming the future too irresistible for employers.
–Simon