If you’ve watched John Mulaney’s Kid Gorgeous Radio City standup special on Netflix, you know he has a great routine about what happens when you get temporarily locked out of your computer. It’s called “The Robot Test.”
The world is run by computers. The world is run by robots and we spend most of our day telling them we’re not a robot just so we can log on and look at our own stuff. All day long. “May I see my stuff please?” “Ahhh, I smell a robot! Prove, prove, prove! Prove to me you’re not a robot! Look at these curvy letters. Much curvier than most letters, wouldn’t you say? No robot could ever read these. You look mortal, if ye be. You look and you type what you think you see! Is it an E or is it a 3? That’s up to ye. The passwords that passed, you correctly guessed, but now it’s time for the robot test! I’ve devised a question no robot could ever answer. Which of these pictures does not have a stop sign in it?” F*ckin’ what?!
So, when you click the box next to “I am not a robot,” it’s a robot that tests you to make sure that you’re human. Think about that.
These days, living--and working--in a virtual world has not been easy. In prior editions of this quiz, I’ve already told you how I have worked with family members and colleagues to get them set up on Zoom. I’ve also worked with elderly friends and relatives to try to help them understand Zoom. One older woman struggled with getting audio. We worked on it for a day and the next day she turned to her son. When I checked back in with her, she told me they’d figured it out. They’d discovered that it was a problem with her privacy setting. She added,
That sounds a lot easier that it was.
These days, of course, a lot of things are hard--and a lot of things are upside-down. For dinner last night, Sunday, March 28th, Sara made breakfast: bacon and eggs with corned beef hash, Bisquick biscuits and canned peaches. I’d been dressed all day for work in blue jeans and a flannel shirt, but late Sunday afternoon, I’d taken a long nap, switching to pajama bottoms. When I came down for breakfast for dinner, I’d forgotten that I’d changed pants. My outfit was outrageous: black and white checked flannel shirt on top of dark blue plaid pants--plus no socks and slippers. And yet, with breakfast for dinner, it all made perfect sense.
Sunday night was a long and difficult night for me at work--and this morning, I’ve already had a busy day so I’m going to keep this short. Like Mulaney, however, I’m looking for meaning in the misunderstandings of mutual minds--real and virtual. There can be humor when two people get their signals crossed, but there’s an extra element of absurdity when the confusion is the result of human interaction with artificial intelligence. It turns out, however, autocorrect can have a sense of humor--and provide us with moments of insight.
What did NOT happen?
A. Very early on in writing this quiz, Will realized that as one of the few people I see everyday, he’d end up as “material” for the quiz. One day, he texted me something which began with “lmao.” I copied it over into the quiz but, thanks to autocorrect, it went out in the quiz as “LMAO”--in all caps. When Will clicked the link and read what I’d written about his text, he told me that he’d deliberately texted “lmao” without the caps because texting in all caps is the online version of yelling at someone;
B. At dinner Sunday night, Will told me that he’d made bread from scratch. He told me, “I kneaded it,” but what I heard was “I needed it”--and I told him “I needed it too.” The bread was delicious;
C. Sunday night, I worked with colleagues on how to handle some grim news having to deal with deaths from coronavirus. Overnight, when I sent out my passdown email to my team, I typed that I’d worked on the coronavirus problem “in consolation” with another colleague. This morning, that colleague pointed out the irony--and unintended accuracy--of that autocorrect;
D. After a morning video conference call, a colleague from England emailed around a picture of the seaside view from outside his home. He said it was from “roast week.” I emailed back that these days, “roast week” sounds a lot more palatable than “last week;”
E. Monday afternoon, I texted Annie in her job as a psychiatric social worker in a NYC hospital. I told her to have faith--faith in Cuom-O, Steve-O and God-O. Autocorrect changed the last one to “Godot.”
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Want more?
Here’s the next quiz in the series: Quiz #15. Old Dogs.
Here’s the previous quiz in the series: Quiz #13. OOO and Pure O.
Here’s the first quiz in the series: Quiz #1. Stella and Social Distancing, March 13, 2020
The quiz is explained here: Steve’s Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz.
Here is an archive of all the quizzes.
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