Marketing, philosophy: the risk you choose…

Self-tutoring about AI and philosophy: the tutor rethinks an old curiosity.

The following is according to my understanding.

Sometimes, traveling, I’ve noticed vending machines near to a counter where someone could also buy similar products face-to-face, like coffee or chocolate bars. I seldom buy coffee out anymore, but I would always choose to buy it face-to-face from someone who pours it, if that option were available. I can’t recall ever drinking coffee from a vending machine.

Notwithstanding my preference, I’ve watched people choose to buy something from a vending machine when they could have bought it across a counter, from a person, a couple of dozen feet away. Such might relate to my post from yesterday, in which I mention the idea that packaging can distinguish one product from another that, elsewise, is the same. Buying a coffee from a vending machine is a different experience versus buying it from a person, so some people won’t do one but will the other. Hence, a business might offer both options.

I’ve always wondered why so many people would choose the vending machine rather than the human, but I think I realize why now: interacting with a human is potentially risky. In particular, an awkward misunderstanding might happen. While unlikely, it’s possible with a human, but impossible with the vending machine.

The eight-year-old me would have countered with the idea that the vending machine might fail to deliver your choice after you’ve put in your money. They didn’t worry about interacting with the human across the counter.

I recall, years ago, my wife sending me to get her a coffee drink one time. It was a complicated one I knew nothing about, since I take coffee black. I tried hard to order her drink correctly. Yet, from across the counter, the 20-year-old asked me, “Do you seriously want to order something?” To her, I’d mismanaged the ordering process. On the second try, however, I did succeed.

Nowadays, it seems, ordering a coffee from a human is far riskier than it was in the 70s. It follows, I guess, that buying a chocolate bar might be as well. Perhaps people choose vending machines because they see the risk there as more tolerable than the risk of dealing with a human. So, at least some people choose machines over humans.

That doesn’t sound very promising for people’s chances to resist being taken over by AI, eh?