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RSSPlease Don’t Try To Hump The Virtual Assistant
A friend of mine has dedicated his working life to speech recognition and synthesis, and sometimes he gives me phone numbers or websites to see what I think of their speech systems from a user’s perspective. As a friend, I should say something like, “Hey that’s really good”, but most of the time, I just try to trip up the application so that it responds positively to something foul. It’s a bad habit that I’ve been carrying since the days when we’d sit around a monochrome screen and snicker over the plethora of disgusting things that we could make ZORK tell us that it didn’t know how to do.
The following conversation took place with computer generated virtual assistant for Alaska Airlines. Although some of the responses seem human, they are all pre-programmed.
March 6th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Does #1GF! know about your virtual affairs? Or do you guys have virtual threesomes?
That’s a pretty hilarious conversation. Please tell me you snicker a little each time you ask a crazy question.
March 6th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Jay and Silent Bob would be proud of you.
-d—
March 6th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
BAAAAAH HAAAAAAA! She’s a pretty good listener. She should try bartending.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:19 am
There is no video on demand on Alaskan Air flights. She was lying. Just like all women. Nothing but lies.
March 8th, 2008 at 9:31 am
This makes me want to call a virtual assistant right now just to see if they will do anything other than say “I do not understand your response” which is all I ever seem to get when sent into voicemail hell. I was facinated that it would be loaded with all that information that seemingly has nothing to do with Alaska Airlines. Like telling that their eyes have color? Who would load that into the system, unless of course, like you, the programer had tried this same thing? All you programers worry me now.