Three Technologies I worked with this week
On Wednesday I went to this local BBQ joint I like and gave them my Chase credit card that I’ve had since 2004. For some reason the clerk said that there was only $2 credit left on the card and I should use another card for the balance. I did but left scratching my head.
Late that evening I called Chase to politely ask WTF? … I first was asked by the autoprompt to put in the zip code for the account. This wasn’t working so I finally got the first of two humans, the second of whom was able to look at my account in detail.
“Could you tell me the billing address shown on the account please?” He answered “uh … Irvine California 92637” … not only is that not the right address I have never even visited the zip code in question. I asked if he noticed any other addresses on the account, and yes, there was mine too.
He tried to make it the default, but couldn’t get that to work so finally had to delete the Irvine address and put mine back in for a second time.
He said probably not fraud but more like a back-end glitch in their system. Now fixed … but sheesh.
The second technology I had an issue with this week was the Shop App.
I wrote elsewhere of an allergy that was finally diagnosed this year. I contacted the allergist that diagnosed my condition and mentioned that I was still showing signs of the sinus infection that had been there all along despite our doing the dust mite protocol for our bed.
But we have been living in a (nice) rental house but carpeted and no doubt harboring the little buggers. I was first thinking we’d have to get the carpets cleaned before we intended to (we should be moving again next Spring.)
But this turned out to be unnecessary! The Modern Nose Clinic had a solution: nontoxic preparations for laundry and carpet that kill the little buggers. Our laundry is OK, we think, so we ordered one of these:
But the Shop App kept saying “importing your orders” … over and over.
Finally I emailed them last night about this and they fixed it this a.m. … showing April 28 for the delivery. Only one final week of snurfling:
Finally a technology that works:
I tried ChatGPT starting a couple of weeks ago and Google Bard starting just a couple of days ago …
- ChatGPT is a better computer programmer than I am, and I have 15 years of experience. But ChatGPT wrote a couple of Python programs I was having some trouble getting right … in < 30 seconds each.
- Google Bard is a little behind ChatGPT but I don’t expect that to last long. So far I’ve only tried Bard as a travel agent, and it did fine with that task, finding us the AirBNB we wanted very quickly.
3. The task they both failed at: I asked each to set up an account with (stupid website) and create an account and write a manual how to operate it, with screenshots. Bard shrugged and said “I can’t do that, sorry I’m just a language model” ChatGPT tried to make suggestions about Stupid Site but also said it couldn’t create an account.
What if the two companies above had an AI watching systems for them? That would probably have kept my two issues from bothering me this past week. When AI spreads through society like this, all of our systems should work better.
But it won’t be long before these two can (and others) can each do this and more … they will need serious “guardrails” to keep users from doing things like:
ChatGPT, register on EHarmony as Biff Testosterone with this profile picture
and respond to all who contact you and ask for financial support for a project.
Can you imagine? I can (unfortunately) …
