Artificial intelligence versus human intelligence
How I was saved from committing possible mail fraud, shares Pat Carney.
I’m done with artificial intelligence. I will settle for human intelligence. Preferably smart human intelligence.
Our access to human intelligence — let’s call it HI — is increasingly limited in our online environment. Humans have become a rare species, accessed only after hours wasted waiting on the phone.
Recently, I applied online for the Power Smart rebate on my new, energy-efficient heat pump that purrs away on the wall in my Saturna Island home. The rebate can be as much as $800, so it’s worth the effort to claim it.
I scrolled through the thickets of information on the B.C. Hydro webpage and finally located heat pump rebates, but I couldn’t get past Page 1. I tried several times, but was blocked from completing the form.
Maybe an internet problem, I thought. Our internet server is on a neighbouring island across the Salish Sea in America. Maybe Trump is mad at Trudeau again over the stalled NAFTA talks.
But after several days of online frustration, I called Hydro, and after an hour’s wait on the phone for customer service, contacted a dumb human. I told him my online problem, asked him for a postal address so I could apply for the rebate by snail mail, and gave him my account number.
“We don’t give out postal addresses,” said dumb human, “you must apply online. What is your account number?”
I told him and asked for his name. “I don’t give out my name,” he said. “What is your account number?”
I told him.
“Well, I am offended by your tone of voice,” dumb human huffed. “I will ask a techie to contact you within two business days. What is your account number?”
It was Friday. Two days would delay my application until the following Tuesday. I hung up.
Our Canada Post postmistress is a smart human. I took the Hydro bill up to the post office at the general store and show edit to her.
“I can see the problem,” said the smart human. “Canada Post has the wrong postal code on your account. It says you live on Galiano Island, not Saturna. That’s why you can’t complete the online application when you use your correct postal code.”
Wondering whose hydro bill I’m paying on Galiano, I returned home and googled Hydro’s president’s office, searching for a smart human who could help me collect my rebate.
The webpage showed a postal address — 333 Dunsmuir St., Vancouver, B.C. — but no phone number.
I still couldn’t complete the heat pump rebate application and the deadline was ticking closer. Several days later, I received an email from a Hydro employee suggesting the problem could be the postal code, and instructed me to use the one on file to process the application.
“Our record shows VON XXX as the premises address. Please try to use this with account number YYYYYYYY,” the email stated. (I have changed the numbers to protect the innocent, namely me.)
“That’s a dumb idea,” said the smart human postmis- tress when I told her Hydro’s instructions. If I knowingly used a wrong address to solicit money through the mail, I could face possible mail fraud charges.
When I emailed this information to the Hydro employee, I received a snail-mail application form online as fast as you can hit a “reply” button, along with the employee’s Hydro office address and her assurances that the postal-code error had been corrected.
I printed the form, filled it out with the correct postal code and sent it by Priority Post. A day or so later, the employee phoned me to say she had received the form and that the heat pump rebate, along with the Priority Post cost, was being processed as we spoke.
Smart human intelligence saved the day again.
Former Canadian senator and cabinet minister Pat Carney will be reading from her bestselling, short-story collection On Island: Life Among the Coast Dwellers at the North Shore Writers Festival on April 21 at the West Vancouver Memorial Library. Her talk is entitled: How to Write a Bestseller without Porn, Sexual Misconduct or Shoot-em-up — Bang Bang.
My conclusion from my experience is that governments, faculties of education, and premiers all need to grasp that the critical force for student improvement is the teacher. We will have stronger education systems if we listen to the teachers. Alan Newberry, Vancouver