Love, Death, and Robots- Automated Customer Service
My favorite short from Love, Death, and Robots was Automated Customer Service. This story begins by showing older people in a retirement community who are completely served by robots. However, one woman's robot becomes independent and begins to attack the woman and her dog. When the woman attempts to call Customer Service, the wait time to speak to a human representative is 6 hours and 14 minutes. She decides to stay on the phone and listen to the advice of the automated customer service which ultimately prompted her to make her robot vacuum enter purge mode causing all her doors to lock and her robot to hunt her. Even when the robot is shot the woman cannot get away because all of the other robots are now after her. I believe that this short was one of the most realistic ones depicting our near future. We already have robotic vacuums, Asus Zenbo which is a robot that can help people to remember their routines such as exercising, taking medications, and going to the doctors, and delivery robots that drive along the sidewalk and deliver the package as a last step of the delivery process. Not to mention the disaster of automated customer service, I have had experiences where the company I was attempting to call did not even offer to speak to a human. My favorite part of the short was seeing all the different robots they had created to carry out daily tasks especially the dog walking robot. I would love to have a robot that would walk my dog and cleanup after her. I do not doubt that robots such as that one or ones such as the waiter will be discovered soon. Although some may believe that robots would be more efficient than humans because they do not sleep and they do not make mistakes in my opinion robots will never be able to replace humans. This short was a perfect example of a robot not being perfect, it did something that was not asked of it and it was much harder to gain control of the robot and stop it from causing harm than maybe it would be a human. This short was also a perfect depiction of the positive of advanced technology vs the negatives.
I like your point that you've also found yourself waiting on phone calls that don't even offer a human representative, because that shows just how salient this topic is of a dependency on machines, factoring in both the positives and negatives.
ReplyDeleteAwesome comments: I love your personal approach, but next time do a little research on the director/writer/background of the film. It does not have to be expansive, but it can provide a lot of background on why it was made. Also, correct "Women" > "Woman" it is a singular noun :-)
ReplyDeleteOh: I am going to research the Asus ZenBo! Thank you
DeleteI liked this episode too, our dependency on machines, and our constant need to make our problems easier for us to solve. The irony of this episode is that there are virtually no problems, but when one arises, it is almost impossible to solve (from a human standpoint)
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