Thanks A lot, AI!

I had no idea why suddenly, out of the blue, without any warning and quite unwelcome, this week Google unleashed AI (artificial intelligence) on my Google phone! The changes were not subtle. There was no introduction. No explanation. It just happened when my phone began making all my decisions regardless of the settings I had decided on months ago.

Let's be clear, I am not a techie, nor do I understand most of what's involved in this looming change to the world with a new "friendly" voice in the room (as if Alexis wasn't enough). Regardless of my limited knowledge, I have skills that I have honed over decades since the good nuns taught me how to write a compound sentence--or how to look up a word in the dictionary for correct spelling and pronunciation and most importantly for the definition. These learned skills got me through a regional spelling bee championship at age 14! I could spell anything back then. But now, without so much as a moment to think about the spelling rules that were drilled into me ---"I before E except after C"---the genius living in my computer self corrects--me! Ok, I can handle that one even if I do not like it one bit. But, Google has gone way passed that now. Here is one story to illustrate:

At the airport in Orlando, I "asked my phone" aka AI: Which terminal is Virgin Atlantic? I was standing in terminal A at the time where Virgin Atlantic was supposed to be, but I could not find it. AI said: Virgin Atlantic has moved to Terminal C effective YESTERDAY! I confirmed this with an attendant behind a desk. The tram took me to C where V.A. was nowhere to be found. The attendant checked his Google tablet: V.A. has NOT moved to C---yet. They were supposed to, but now they are in B. The tram took me back from where I had come. I asked the next information person holding a tablet: "Where is V.A.?" She replied: "That's the question of the day"! "What's the answer"? I said as politely as I could.

She opened up her Google AI phone and showed me a photo of V.A.'s new "pop up" location! A major airline on which I would fly for nine hours across the Atlantic Ocean was now a "pop up" that AI had misdirected me to when I first queried Google. Two major errors in an airport the size of Disney world caused passengers with rolling suitcases to jump on an off trams and walk endless corridors in search of a human to ask: Where the hell is my airline...please?

Two things that stood out in my growing frustration: AI lied to me! V.A. failed to communicate with me. The consequences of such inadequacies leave me cold. I want a warm-blooded person not a robot to answer my questions. Is that too much to ask? Today, the same query to AI produces this information: Virgin Atlantic plans to eventually move to Terminal C and will confirm a new date once CBP approval is secured". Thanks a lot AI and V.A.

What's next? While my phone wants to change any setting I set regardless of my desire to do damage control from knowing more than necessary from the world at large, I am bombarded with unwanted "options", usually when I need to use my phone to call an actual person.

I thought I was a wiser consumer for having gone to Google over Apple. I liked that I could be somewhat out of the main-main stream of the tech world, making my own choices and decisions to opt out of many unwanted and unnecessary data-driven marketing schemes.

This week that changed drastically when Google announced---boasted---that it had "rolled out massive, historic changes to search and its AI platforms . . . Information Agents can now setup, 24/7 background agents to track specific data, research topics, and synthesize alerts on a continuous basis". Good luck to folks like me, of any age, including my grandkids who are trying to figure out how to untether themselves from their cell phones.

Simultaneously with this Google pronouncement, Pope Leo wrote that AI must be "disarmed" i.e., "freed from corporate monopolies"--- Hello Google: What did Pope Leo say about AI? https://youtu.be/qZ0Tt49KDXk?si=aeSIGq8sN24Rg00t

In conclusion, the question for you the reader is: Did I write this blog or did AI?