Sony early on employed an automated voice recognition system for warranty service that could not understand what I was saying, period. After the automaton voice told me "I don't understand, please repeat your complaint" a dozen times, I gave up. It was brilliant! They could pretend they were still serving customers, while incurrent zero expense for actually fixing the problems their products created! You're saying banks are using equivalent systems now?

I got a check for contract work I was doing with the name of my company, "Windy Hill", on the memo line. The bank teller argued with me for 15 minutes insisting I couldn't deposit that check to my account, because it wasn't signed by "Windy Hill", before the manager pointed out to her that name was on the memo line of the check, not the payee line, so it was irrelevant. Needless to say, I prefer online banking! (I never went back to that bank branch office again either.) I never cease to be amazed by how dedicated bank tellers can be to their being wrong. Had a bank teller count out $1500 cash in 20 dollar bills once (they didn't have larger bills), then count it again and come up 1 short, then instead of counting it a third time, she just pulled another $20 out of the drawer and handed it to me. I counted it when I got back to my car, yep, she gave me $1520. I figured if she was so dedicated to being wrong then it was her problem, not mine.

I was contracting through Insight Global. They were enforcing Meta's policy of "You have access to our trade secrets, so we can't let you know in advance when you will be leaving." Which is stupid, because I had plenty of time in the 17 months I was working there to steal data or program in time bombs. Why would I wait until after I was given notice to do anything unethical?

What about an AI to recommend porn that works for all your obscure kinks?

Having crappy speakers you'll never use doesn't cost that much. The HDTV tuner you'll never use adds about $50 to the cost of the "monitor" though. I still prefer buying TVs to monitors.

"Big Brother, by Microsoft".

Make it just like the killer rabbit guarding the Cave of Caerbannog in Monty Python's The Holy Grail? How does a killer robot know it's being eaten by a snake, and not something else... like a human?

That brings up the possibility of a whole new market for those sex bots they are currently working on! Bait bots!

RFC 1149, IP Over Avian Carriers (IPoAC)? Or RFC 2549, IP Over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service? Leave to April 1 RFCs to beat a joke to death...

Why do the British drink warm beer? Refrigeration by Lucas!

When a company knows exactly when people are going to be laid off, but their company policy is to keep it a surprise? Common courtesy would be to tell the victim as soon as you know, so that they can start looking for other employment. Instead, companies now prefer to not tell you until they have a guard standing behind you to immediately walk you out the door before you can steal any company data or trigger any dead man's switches. But they still expect you to give 2 weeks notice before leaving... which gives them a chance to immediately fire you and not pay you for the 2 weeks until your new job starts. Both of those things have actually happened to me, at Meta and Biamp.

Insight Global emailed me an End of Contract Survey... before they told me I was being terminated. Meta had planned on telling me I was leaving when there was guard standing behind me to immediately escort me out the door, but the email ruined the surprise for them!

AI can do nothing much, much faster than you can!

The question is, have any of these efforts to replace humans with AI actually succeeded, or have they all proved the AI sucks and will cost your company money? According to an MIT report, it is the latter: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffuturism.com%2Fai-agents...

Actually, what killed the UK car industry was the UK government mandating that all cars must be made from UK parts in a futile attempt at protectionism. I bring that up because that is EXACTLY what Trump is doing to the US car industry right now with his tariffs! Trump will go down in history as the idiot who killed US manufacturing. Thanks, Trump!