Listen to A Requiem for My Dignity, Sacrificed at the Altar of AI via my podcast

I consider myself a technologically competent person. I can navigate the internet’s darkest corners and wrestle with code that would make a lesser mortal weep. So when I decided to try a geek’s attempt at an, ahem, “AI” screen reader, after having known me for about three months and assuming he knew better than existing screen reader developers, to order my groceries online, I thought, “This will be a breeze.”

Reader, it was not a breeze. It was a Category 5 hurricane of humiliation.

Let’s call the screen reader’s voice ‘Clarence.’ Clarence had a default voice that was a cultureless chipper, can-do American tenor, the kind of voice that sounds like it should be hosting a children’s television show about sentient teapots.

The first sign of trouble was the login page. I typed my username. Clarence, in his infinite wisdom, decided to read it back to me, not as a word, but as a phonetic adventure, even though I navigated by words instead of characters.

“You have typed: Rrr-oh-BIT-king-ET-tee,” he announced with the confidence of a man discovering a new continent.

I paused. Okay. A little weird, but manageable. I navigated to the password field. As I typed, Clarence, whose volume was apparently locked at “enthusiastic stadium announcer,” began to narrate my keystrokes.

“BUBBLE! Asterisk! BULLET!” he shouted into my headphones. By the fourth one, he got creative. “That’s another wee star for you, champ!”

Once logged in, I navigated to the search bar. I wanted bananas. A simple, humble request. I typed “bananas.”

Clarence cleared his throat, ready for his moment. “Searching for... bay-NAH-nahs!” he sang, somehow managing to rhyme it with “pajamas.” The results loaded. He began to read the first item.

“Organic Bay-nah-nahs, by the bun-CH,” he chirped. “One pound, seventy-nine pence.”

He wasn’t reading the currency symbol. He was reading the word “pence,” despite the website being American. I had no idea why. Clarence, it seemed, was an Anglophile with a passion for creative pronunciation.

I added the bay-nah-nahs to my cart. Next, I needed milk. I typed “milk.”

“Searching for... MILK!” he roared, like a drill sergeant. “Item one: Two percent reduced-fat milk. Item two: Whore-milk.”

I froze. My fingers hovered over the keyboard. Whore-milk? What in God’s name was whore-milk? I slowly navigated back to the item. The text on the screen clearly said “Whole Milk.”

Clarence, the perverted teapot-host, had made an executive decision.

I started laughing. A dangerous, wheezing sound that was half amusement, half despair. I decided to press on. I was a captain going down with his ship. I searched for “lettuce.”

“Searching for... let-TOO-chay!”

I searched for “bread.”

“Searching for... BREAD!” he screamed again, seemingly under the impression that bread was an emergency situation. “Item one: Sliced white bread. Item two: Sour... DOUGH-gut.”

Dough-gut. I pictured a loaf of bread with a beer belly. The laughter was now a physical force, shaking my shoulders, bringing tears to my eyes. My dignity had packed its bags and was booking a flight to a country where screen readers were not possessed by the ghost of a madman.

The final straw was the checkout page. I navigated to the “Confirm Purchase” button. Clarence, sensing the grand finale, took a deep, theatrical breath.

“Are you absolutely, positively certain you wish to purchase these items?” he asked, his voice full of manufactured gravitas. “This is your final chance to turn back from the precipice of... grocery.”

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give him the satisfaction. I slammed my laptop shut. I stood up, walked to my front door, put on my shoes, and grabbed my cane. I would go to the store. I would hunt for my own bananas and my non-prostitute milk.

I had been defeated by an algorithm and, frankly, shit code with a mid-western accent and a dirty mind. Rest in peace, my dignity. You fought valiantly.

A personal note from me, Robert, before we get to the recommendations. Fuck AI, and tech culture, and tech bros. I’m a techy person. A nerd, if you will, but I absolutely hate it when people in power, of any kind, use their power to systematically and relentlessly harm others for profit. Sean, the dashingly exquisite narrator that narrated this post, has lost work to automated content generation. Writers lost work to automated content generation. Visual artists have lost work to automated content generation. Not because AI is supposedly intelligent. It’s not intelligent, at all. It’s an algorithm, but the people at the top that hold all the power never see us as people. They only see us as numbers on a spreadsheet. I try to live by one simple decree. Be kind to people, ruthless to corporations. Support artists instead of corporations.

To that end, you should hire Sean and support him in other ways! Learn more on Sean’s website, and you can support me financially, here.

If you enjoyed this essay, you might enjoy, Technically Speaking BY Michael Elliot