You gotta laugh, or you cry.

This is a postscript to yesterday’s post about recent experiences with AI.

Yesterday my grocery order was delivered. All was great except I was sent plantains instead of the bananas I ordered. I have nothing against plantains (big ugly sticky things), but they are not what I want in my morning smoothie. I contacted the store to say the bananas were missing from my order, and I didn’t want to be charged for them, and I would return the plantains. I received a nice AI chat message that I would be refunded for the banana – singular and plantains were not charged and could not be returned. One banana is $.26. The plantains are $.68 each. I received a $.26 refund. Sigh. I think I came out on the plus side monetarily of that transaction. But still no bananas. I may need to expand my culinary skills and figure out a recipe for plantains. Bonus!

When I had time today, I contacted the store again to try to straighten out the problem. Again, the chatbot said they had refunded one banana. I did not receive ONE banana; I received SEVEN plantains. The AI bot for this establishment is clearly not as smart as the ones I spoke about yesterday. I am the first to admit that all the math I may have learned is nestled in a part of my brain that is not accessible. But this clearly did not compute.

Even as a retiree, I do not want to spend my precious time chatting with AI. I’m on the short end of the life/time continuum. I asked the bot if I dared to reorder bananas. Its reply was a stodgy, “I am not authorized to refund bananas. You can reorder bananas.” That made no sense since I was refunded $.26 for one banana.

Oh well, today I reordered seven bananas along with five bottles of wine. Do you think they’ll get the message?