A.I. - The elephant in the room: Ken Gibbs

Every time I see ‘AI’ in the title of another article, I think, “Oh, dear, here we go again !”

I can’t help but think that this ‘device/app/programme’ is badly misnamed. If, as we seem to be led to believe, AI is supposed to be the all-knowing, superior intelligence which we all fear, consider this:

Probably for the first time in my life, I find that I have too much money held in one bank in the UK. Sounds like a contradiction in terms ? Well, it isn’t, because it is all about the guarantee that all major banks in the UK provide - that if someone manages to hack into the bank’s system and divert my money into their own hands, they guarantee my holding up to a certain level only. More than that, and the hacker gets away scot-free. So, I am dancing around making sure that my total holding in my bank never rises above that magical amount.

The solution is quite simple – split my savings into two or more banks where the guarantees ensure that no matter how careless the bank(s) happen to be, my money is assured.

Going this route is simple – place a chunk of money with ‘A N Other’ bank and then relax, and check my holdings periodically to ensure that nothing has ‘evaporated’.

If only, if only it were that simple !

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Having a son who works in the banking industry means that I have a free-of-cost financial advisor to suggest which banks are likely NOT to fail, and I would select one of his suggestions. Even here, one has to be squeaky-clean in what one asks of him lest we be accused of insider-trading, so the questions are of necessity general and oblique. I ended with a list of five banks, and made my choice. It is a bank which is still partly owned by the government having been taken over during one of the banking crises to avoid it having to fail which would have allowed a run on all banks. So far, so good.

The next step is to start a new savings account with my selected other-bank. In the good-old-days, one would simply saunter into the local branch and ask for the appropriate forms which one would fill in, adding photocopies of passport (for ID purposes) and utility bills (to confirm one’s residence). In this brave new world, my selected other-bank simply doesn’t have a branch in our local area, so I was forced to consider driving to the nearest branch which just happens to be close to 30 miles away and only accessed through a nightmare of road closures and detours probably making the journey closer to 40 miles in the one direction.

I drove, found parking and walked to the branch of the bank which is ‘manned’ by two women who are both personable and efficient. I ask for the forms to start a new account only to be told that they are unable to help because in this brave new world of ours, such a simple routine can only be effected on-line. I drive around 80 carbon-miles to discover this ? I ask if it is possible for this branch to accept my documentation (photocopy of my passport, utility bill etc), only to be told that I would be required to submit those documents on-line.

I tried to hide my irritation but had some difficulty. So, here we have to rearrange my thinking to undertake the initial registration for my new bank account, sitting at my desk at home. The bank website indicated that I should use a free-phone telephone number and undertake the exercise on the phone with documentation to be sent by e-mail. This raises another problem – I am deaf. Phoning is often useless as I cannot understand what the noises are at the other end of the phone and my landline phone is not text-enabled.

No problem, apparently. All I have to do is ‘talk’ to ‘Cora’, a chat-bot which is so named to define that it/she belongs to my new bank and not to Amazon or Barclays or Coutts. . . . . . All I need do is to sit at my computer, at home, and ‘correspond’ with Cora.

Fine. I connect with Cora who sounds ultra polite. I ask her a straight-forward question which elicits a response that I simply cannot understand. I re-phrase the question, only to have an identical nonsensical response, and this conversation goes back and forth with answers bearing absolutely no relationship to the question(s) asked.

Then I remembered that Cora was programmed with AI by back-office computer specialists/programmers who have a vocabulary which a large proportion of the society cannot understand; and I also remembered that wonderful acronym GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) which was coined early in the computer age.

I would submit that AI stands for ABSOLUTE IDIOTS.

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Ken Gibbs can be contacted via kengibbs1941@gmail.com

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