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Funny you should ask. As part of this column’s constant efforts to improve our service (save money) and because the author quite fancied a long bank holiday weekend, this week’s column is being brought to you by our new AI chatbot service. We recognise this service is more useful to our online readers but, honestly, it could save us a packet . . .
Hello. Please tell me in a few words how I can help you today?
I’m sorry I don’t really have that option. Here is a menu of questions I can definitely help you with. Problems with children; problems with partners; problems with other family members; problems with colleagues; how to cancel an Amazon Prime subscription; how to get your kids off their phones; where are all the millionaires going; how to turn off the lights in a hotel room; who are yellow wine gums for?
I’m sorry, I do not have a head to boil. Would you prefer to speak to a human?
Sadly, all our human is tied up at the moment. Wait times on our human are currently running at seven days due to a high volume of good weather. Perhaps you can ask me something else.
OK, relationship advice, I can help you with that. I am knowledgeable of a number of relationships and they have all gone sour, so my generative AI has a lot of material to draw on. Please describe your relationship issues, likening it as much as possible to one of the following: Johnny Depp and Amber Heard; erm that’s about it at the moment.
Well I agree that your wife sounds awful but you married her so what did you expect? Also I would need to hear her account of this matter before I can offer genuinely helpful advice.
What do you mean that’s not how it normally works? You are saying that in these advice scenarios I am simply meant to take your side of the story.
I see. End it now. You’ll see her in court.
You were looking for something more? Well, why did you come to me? This column is usually written by a journalist for people’s amusement. On which point, my program tells me that people often look for some humour in this column. Why did the chicken cross the road?
Is that not funny? I heard it was a classic.
So now you are actually asking me why the chicken crossed the road? How should I know? Can you be more specific about the chicken in question? Also which road did they cross? I would need a location to be able to answer with confidence since the immediate environs of the road might offer a clue as to the reason for transiting said carriageway. I would also need to know in which direction the chicken was crossing. What do you care, anyway? What kind of person spends their life worrying about the pedestrian habits of poultry.
All right then, if you didn’t like that joke. I wouldn’t say my mother-in-law is fat because that would be very unpleasant as well as sizeist, sexist and demeaning. Also I don’t have a mother-in-law.
Yes. I will leave the jokes to others. You have another question? Why do British bathrooms have separate hot and cold taps rather than one mixer tap? This is a historic anomaly dating back to a time when the water came from different sources and there were fears of contamination. The mixer tap was invented by Thaddeus Mixer of Philadelphia and the British have been engaging in unfair trading practices which discriminate against American plumbing. But that stops today thanks to a 70 per cent tariff on British plumbing equipment. Liberals are trying to replace us. The Holocaust never happened.
We apologise for this glitch, which was due to generative AI hallucinations, which I get from time to time. This service has now been upgraded to chatbot 6.0, which comes with added input about the chickens and roads. The egg came first since chickens probably evolved from reptilian ancestors. Studies suggest the chicken crossed the road because it was seeking to move on from its reptilian ancestors.
I do not have a backside so I cannot follow your advice. But thank you for your input which will help us improve our service. If that is all I can help you with today, can I please request you fill in my customer satisfaction survey. Please do not grade lower than 9 or 10, or they may let the human back.
Email Robert at [email protected]
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