The Next Book I Read Will be Authored by a Robot

Monday, November 19, 2018


It won’t be long before our electronic books will be authored by robots. That’s an exaggeration, of course, because machines can’t think and never will. Unlike the fictional HAL, machines can only follow the instructions their human creators have programed into them.

Still, sometimes it seems as if machines are taking over, and it isn’t always a pleasant experience.

When we left New York City last week, we decided to get lunch at Newark Airport. An entrée cost $30 at a sit-down restaurant, so we headed for the food court. The prices were better, but the service was highly automated, and not in a good way.

After we figured out what type of food we wanted, we ordered it from a pad. We’ve done that at other places, but this menu didn’t include any drinks and we couldn’t find any place to order them from.

Paying was an even bigger problem. The person behind the counter was there to make up the orders and nothing else. Another patron finally told us that we had to pay for our food at one of the self-checkout kiosks. It wasn’t until we had scanned the order ticket and charged our sandwiches that we discovered we had to get our own drinks and scan them in, as well. Even the “on tap” Coke that flowed directly from a machine was purchased by scanning the code on the correct size cup and paying for it before pouring the drink. But when I tried to use cash to pay for my drink, I was told I would have to use a different checkout station. So I gave up and charged that, too.

We weren’t the only ones who were frustrated or confused, and the food court paid somebody to stand by the self-checkout machines and explain how they worked. The concessionaire may have saved on one or two employees, but at what cost in customer satisfaction?

Robots will never write books without help from a human creator.

But when did technology replace customer service?

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