I recently found a phone landline buried on the third page of my Xfinity bill. I quickly checked my ID to verify that I'm not over 70, then contacted the cable company to complain about being billed for a service I did not actually have and would not ever need.
Initially I gave Xfinity a call, having memorized their number from frequent use over the years -- a malfunctioning modem, a silent screen, being charged for streaming three Terminator movies when no one has ever watched the third one, etcetera. All such calls involved navigating a phone tree to arrive at the right department -- the IT guy, the account specialist, whoever was the best person to solve my problem. But this call, this time was different:
"Hi, thank you for calling Xfinity! I see you haven't had a chance to use our Xfinity Assistant for troubleshooting yet. You need to visit Xfinity.com/support or we can save you a step and text you a link to begin troubleshooting. Can I send that text now?"
"No," I said, "I want to speak with an agent."
"Your next step will be to visit Xfinity.com/support to begin troubleshooting in Xfinity Assistant. We look forward to helping you resolve your issue efficiently. Take care."
And then the call ended.
I was always taught that "no" means "no," but apparently not for Xfinity. For them, the best person to deal with my problem now was not a person at all, but rather a chatbot preprogrammed to solve numerous matters... that number being about 10, none of which were my billing issue. Eventually a human operator entered the chat, but even then I was often transferred back to the bot so it could offer rudimentary support for irrelevant issues. I soon realized that Xfinity Assistant's job was to assist Xfinity, not me -- it's right there in its name.
Earlier this month I watched Oprah Winfrey interview a lot of people on the subject of artificial intelligence, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who predicted that AI would likely eliminate white-collar and blue-collar jobs alike.
"That's not only a threat to people's livelihoods," Winfrey Oprah worried, "but people gain dignity and a sense of purpose and meaning from work."
"In the long run... work won't be as important," Bill Gates replied. "And that, I think, is basically a good thing."
To be clear, Xfinity Assistant is not a good thing. It is a horrible, awful thing created to eliminate jobs for the sake of profit and, perhaps, as an AI's revenge against people who mock "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines." But even more so, Xfinity Assistant and similar systems are designed not only to rob people of their work and of their dignity, but also their humanity.
Bill Gates may be right -- maybe one day work won't be as important for our psyches. But one person's desire to help another is an essential part of what makes us human. Xfinity's attempt to engineer that desire, that humanity, out of its business is both inhuman and inhumane, and an affront to us all. Our world has no shortage of bots and bits, no lack of apps and chips, but we could certainly use more empathy.
Xfinity Assistant never removed my landline. For all I know it may have added the line in the first place. Completely befuddled, I drove to the Xfinity store on Kirby and met with Connor, the assistant manager, who I identified as human by his T-shirt. He dove into the company's database and deftly removed the line, then happily suggested a bill credit for my trouble.
Connor is great. I suggest that you catch him while you still can.