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16
Jan
2022
Sunday January 16, 2022
I got a phone message the other night. A very nice voice reminded me that I had not paid my last electricity bill. So, of course, I called the company the next morning. And I got, of course, a voice menu.
“To confirm that you are the authorized representative for this account, enter your birthdate…”
I did.
“That information does not correspond with our data,” the robot voice informed me.
I got through, eventually, to a helpful woman who explained that the computer couldn’t recognize my birthdate, because it had never been entered. Now, wouldn’t you think that a computer smart enough to handle millions of accounts could have told me that?
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: algorithms, intelligence, Computers
10
2018
I have no sentimental feelings about California quail. But in my experience, they make chickens look like candidates for Mensa.
We joke about chickens crossing the road. Around here, quail move in flocks. Sometimes so many they give an impression of the earth itself rippling in waves.
There is no such thing as a single quail. So if I see a solitary quail at the side of the road when I’m driving, I slow down. That quail will certainly try to cross the road in front of me. At the last possible second. And it will equally certainly be followed by the rest of the flock. They could fly, but they won’t. They’ll erupt from the grass and underbrush like nerf balls, and scuttle on Roadrunner legs across the blacktop.
Except that when they’re almost across, they will decide they didn’t want to go there after all; they will turn, en masse, and head back — sometimes actually underneath my car.
No, I do not have a high opinion of quail intelligence.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Quail, Mensa, intelligence