Tyler entered his favorite coffee bar and suddenly found there was no one behind the counter.
“Hi? Is there anybody working today?” he asked curiously.
He didn’t hear or see anyone, but observed people in the seats, drinking coffee.
Then he noticed a new button on the counter that said “Press Here for Service.” He pressed it and a hologram appeared.
“Order, please “ it said in a somewhat human voice.
“Coffee, please,” Tyler uttered, slightly unnerved by the hologram.
“Coffee,” the voice repeated.
Quickly, realizing he didn’t indicate what he wanted in his coffee or what type of coffee, Tyler objected.
“Wait. I want a chestnut coffee with steamed oat milk and a single caramel.”
In a split second, the voice replied.
“Name?” the untethered voice asked.
“Um, Tyler.”
Then the payment window on the pad next to the button lit up and Tyler tapped his card.
Satisfied he ordered, Tyler watched the newsfeed on the overhead television for a few minutes as the disembody voice periodically read names as coffee cups slid down a small slide onto the counter.
As he saw people removing their coffees from the counter, Tyler wondered if there were real people making the coffee in the back or if the job had been given up to little robots? At least real people are still drinking the coffee, not robots. He laughed to himself.
Looking at his watch, Tyler realized about seven minutes had gone by. Thinking he missed his name, he went over to the counter and looked at the names on the cups. One cup read “m taller.” He looked around and realized nobody had taken this cup as it was off to the side. Then he suddenly understood his mistake. When he said um Tyler when asked his name, the machine must’ve interpreted it as M taller. And curiously, there was a piece of caramel taped next to it.
Tyler laughed at the mistake and shook his head. “It must’ve thought I meant a piece of caramel. I didn’t even know they sold that.”
Taking a sip of his coffee, he immediately winced.
“Well, it is coffee and it does have some kind of milk in it, but it’s not what I ordered. How do they expect robots to do a person’s job accurately?”
Tyler shook his head and while walking down the street, he observed an extremely frustrated man arguing with a parking meter, not a person or meter maid… just the meter. The parking meter kept ordering him to swipe his card. He swiped the card, but it wasn’t working. All he could hear was a buzzing sound and the word error repeated over and over.
Shaking his head again, he proceeded to the bus stop. When the bus door opened, several people in line were confused as there was no driver.
“I heard it on the news. It’s one of those self-driving buses that the city is using to save money,” one person spoke up.
“Hurry if you don’t get on the bus right away, the computer shuts the door on you. It’s based on weight,” another passenger explained.
Sure enough, as soon as he said it, the bus closed the door on a lady who just entered, locking her bag between the doors. As she screamed and frantically pulled at her bag to rescue it, another passenger shouted to her.
“You have to put your foot all the way on the top step.”
The man in front of Tyler looked at him and they both shook their heads in disbelief.
“This isn’t gonna save any money once they get sued for maiming somebody in their mechanical doors,” the man remarked.
Finally, the lady stretched to the top step in the door reopened, releasing her bag. Then Tyler and the few people in front of him quickly jumped up the stairs to avoid getting caught in the door. A while later when he reached his stop, the door opened and he raced down the steps to evade the door, which seemed to open and close so quickly it was like running a gauntlet.
Shaking his head again, Tyler arrived at work and sat at his desk, only to find a note from his boss that enraged him.
“Ai, Ai… I’m sick of the word,” Tyler shouted.
Hearing his rant, Grant, his cubicle neighbor, popped his head up above the walls.
“What’s wrong?”
Exasperated, Tyler shook his head. “I’m practically beheaded on the bus and I can’t get the right coffee, all because of these machines. I feel I’m living on Tatooine or something. Now my boss wants me to use Ai to redo the spreadsheets I spent days working on, to check my work. I’m sick of it. It’s taking over.”
A sympathetic Grant agreed. “Yeah, I know. It seems like everybody’s using it instead of their own brain. And it’s not always right. I got two Ai reports on the exact same parameters and they came out completely different. But soon they’ll try and save money and replace all of us with Ai.”
Tyler shook his head, understanding. “I know. It’s so annoying. While it can be a good tool, I don’t want it to do everything. After all, the first word is artificial, not real. These robots and Ai just don’t understand like a human can. My kingdom for a human.”
“I know I spent an hour this morning going from Robo operator to Robo operator trying to get a part for something and nobody can understand what I’m saying. I know I have an accent, but I find it hard to believe that nobody programming this stuff has an accent,” Grant explained shaking his head in frustration.
Tyler sat as his keyboard and sighed.
“What are you gonna do? Hey, are we still on tonight for that new robot fight club. Everybody said it’s like rock em, sock em robots… with real robots.”
Grant smiled. “Yeah, my Tesla can drive us.”
