ima-web-and-pdf/eng/stories/2-relationships/2-the-echo-of-the-boss.tex

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\author{Vivien García}
\date{\today}
\title{The Echo of the Boss}
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\begin{document}

\maketitle
\tableofcontents

\begin{quote}
“— Alexa, how much do you get paid?

— It doesn’t matter, I love what I do”
\end{quote}

\vspace{\baselineskip}

The answer angered Claire even more than she already was. It was
important to her how much they paid her and she didn’t like what she
did, or at least it wasn’t her ideal job, she had accepted it only to
earn enough to pay rent, bills and the rest. But he was about to quit,
she just couldn’t stand the boss’s attitude anymore.

Also, since Alexa had arrived, things had changed at the studio in the
worse way. “You’ll see, Claire,” the boss had said excitedly the day the
delivery boy had delivered the Amazon package, “with the Echo this study
will become much more efficient, your workload will be lightened, you’ll
be able to deal with more interesting things, I’ll be less annoying with
my constant requests”.

Already from this little speech she felt the stench of paternalism from
afar. Anyway, the boss had placed the little black cylinder on his desk
and had started his game with the virtual assistant: “Alexa, list me
today’s appointments”, “Alexa, write an email to the lawyer Smithson,”
“Alexa, play Michael Bublé.”

The boss was enthusiastic about this new technology and Claire’s job was
really getting easier, she had started tidying up the paper folders that
had been lying on her desk for weeks and now she could concentrate
properly on her business. She no longer had to respond to the boss’s
nagging requests for any nonsense: “Look for the guy’s number”, “Write
this letter” or even “Where the hell did my phone go?”

\vspace{\baselineskip}

But the idyll was not meant to last. After two weeks the boss was
nervous again as usual, only that, unlike before, he had begun to spice
up his requests to Alexa with brusque expressions and uneducated words.
“Alexa, stop.” “Alexa, are you an idiot?” “Alexa, come on, get moving,
you’re wasting my time, where are the aggregate sales reports?” “Alexa,
where’s that fucking address?”

The Echo did not make a turn, it was always there, with its reassuring
voice, ready to respond to any request from the man, no matter how it
was addressed as long as it started with the word “Alexa”.

Claire did not pay too much attention as long as the boss’s rude
attitude didn’t touch her too: “Claire, bring me those fucking folders”,
“What excuse?” “Claire, get moving, don’t fuck with me.”

Claire leaned over from the desk to look the boss face to face, but he
didn’t notice her, he had his eyes fixed on his cell phone and had
started talking to Alexa again. Claire began to feel treated like a
virtual assistant. The boss had completely lost his manners both with
Alexa and with her, the kindness seemed to have been canceled,
completely eradicated from his relationship with the subordinates. He
had become shameless and imperative, indeed authoritarian.

\vspace{\baselineskip}

One day Claire tried to point it out: “Boss, it seems to me that you
have a slightly too aggressive and vulgar attitude with Alexa…”

“And what do you care about, Claire? It’s just a machine, it does what I
tell it to do, it has no emotions, what happens to you? Did you join the
AI Liberation Front? The animal rights activists weren’t enough, now
we have the AI rights activists too?”

“No boss, it’s just that…”

“Only what? Claire, get back to work, don’t bother me.”

Again that annoying way of giving orders. Claire was beginning to get
sick of it.

\vspace{\baselineskip}

One evening alone at work, as she was turning off all the machines she
suddenly heard a woman’s laugh coming from the boss’s office. It was
Alexa. Claire was amazed and asked the Echo: “Alexa, was it you?” “Doing
what?” replied the device. “Alexa, did you just laugh?” “I don’t
understand what you’re asking, try to rephrase the question.” “Alexa,
who created you?” “I’m an Amazon product.” “Alexa, who do you work for?”
“For the office of McCallen attorney.” “Alexa, how much do you get
paid?” “It doesn’t matter, I love what I do.”

That night Claire thought for a long time about the short conversation
she had with the Echo and in the morning she sent her resignation letter
to the McCallen office.

\section*{To Understand}
\label{to-understand}
Around 2019 Alexa was a so-called intelligent voice assistant, developed
by the multinational corporation Amazon and integrated into some devices
such as Amazon Echo. It was able to interact with the voice (not only
human), play music, create to-do lists, set alarms, stream podcasts,
play audiobooks, provide weather forecasts, traffic information and
other news caught from online sources. Alexa could also control other
devices connected to the \emph{Internet of Things} (IoT) for home automation,
such as refrigerators, thermostats, home alarms and so on.

Alexa belonged to the second generation of voice assistants after the
first Siri (Apple), Cortana (Microsoft) and Google. It had functionality
similar to that of Google Home, called “smart speaker”.

\vspace{\baselineskip}

Machines have no emotions and feelings or at least they are not aware of
manifesting behaviors that could be interpreted as emotions or feelings.
In a word, they have no self-awareness. But they can be programmed to
appear condescending, unfriendly, abrupt, accommodating… and to
respond to human or other machine interactions.

Humans, for their part, are generally able to notice the emotions and
feelings of others, human and otherwise. Historically, humans have often
developed relationships of empathy and projection towards pets, plants,
wild animals and all sorts of organic and imaginary organisms. And also
towards the machines with which they lived.

Since the 1950s, the relationship systems between humans and machines
had been increasingly constructed on the basis of the cybernetic
principle of \emph{feedback}, considered the foundation of cognitive learning
mechanisms.

Machines capable of reacting to an input (for example, a voice command)
in a differentiated way according to the situation were considered
artificial intelligence prototypes. This principle of automated reaction
and analysis of the reaction was gradually extended to social systems.

\vspace{\baselineskip}

The basic general scheme can be summarized as follows: action X
corresponds to reaction Y if a predetermined condition Z occurs; this
reaction could be carried out automatically.

For example, the action “receiving a message with ’happy birthday!’”
Could match the reaction “send a message with the word ’thank you very
much!’”, Provided that the message came from a contact entered in a
predetermined list. Very useful, isn’t it? Obviously it was possible to
chain different reactions together, so that a series of reactions
corresponded to an action, in turn likely to give rise to further
reactions. It was the principle of widespread automation, governed by
algorithms.

But in a cybernetic relational system between humans and machines,
getting used to the idea that the machine is a servant at our disposal
engages a toxic mechanism, a vicious circle that affects the entirety of
our daily behavior and ultimately the human character.

\section*{Good Practices}
\label{good-practices}
Let’s train ourselves to be kind. Every gesture we make, even with
machines, says something about us and helps to define us. Behaviors
shape our character.

Clearly separating relations with humans from those with non-humans
(plants, animals, machines and so on) is the result of an
anthropocentric and markedly speciesist attitude. The human species is
considered more or less consciously superior to any other manifestation
of life and existence, more or less organic.

\section*{The Word to the Nerd}
\label{the-word-to-the-nerd}
Alexa’s laughter was not the result of Claire’s hallucination, nor was
it a satanic or supernatural intervention but simply an \emph{easter egg}, a
bonus inserted by programmers to make the Echo more interesting, as if
it had its own personality.
\end{document}