Comment by dspillett
2 months ago
> Thank you notes from AI systems can’t possibly feel meaningful,
The same as automated apologies.
Not from an “AI”, but I spent over an hour⁰ waiting for a delayed train¹, then the journey, on Tuesday, being regaled every few minutes with an automated “we apologise for your journey taking longer than expected” which is far more irritating than no apology at all.
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[0] I lie a little here - living near the station and having access to live arrival estimations online meant I could leave the house late and only be waited on the platform ~20 minutes, but people for whom this train was a connecting leg of a longer journey didn't have that luxury.
[1] which was actually an earlier train, the slot in the timetable for the one I was booked on was simply cancelled, so some were waiting over two hours
My dad (retired philosophy and ethics instructor) once told me, "Today the self-checkout computer thanked me for shopping there. Do you think it was being sincere?"
I think language will shift over time to the point where "Thank you" comes to mean "Go away." That's how the self checkout means it.