Post by @davidtheeviloverlord@mastodon.social

2026-09-24 22:36 UTC

My brother-in-law's laptop stopped working. It's under warranty. So he called #Dell. "Hi! I'm your A.I. assistant. Before I can help you, you have to read me a tiny number from the back of your laptop." He can't read it, he's blind. I read it. The "A.I" has one job. It is very bad at it. I read it out 20 times before the machine got it right. In the middle of this debacle, I asked the "A.I." to put me through to a person. "I can't do that until you read me the number." #Enshittification

Replies (4)

@slyvorg@social.vivaldi.net 2026-09-25 06:52

@davidtheeviloverlord@mastodon.social @masek@infosec.exchange The Philip K. Dick “Ubik" door scene was a prophecy.

Open ##4840787
@grumble209@kolektiva.social 2026-09-24 22:41

@davidtheeviloverlord@mastodon.social The only thing dumber than AI are the people that decide to use AI without building in a way to bypass the AI.

Open ##5102510
@JugglingWithEggs@mstdn.social 2026-09-24 23:08

@davidtheeviloverlord@mastodon.social Imagine if an AI decided the quickest and most efficient way to resolve a complaint, was for the customer to never be given the opportunity to raise a complaint…

Open ##5102511
@TimWardCam@c.im 2026-09-24 23:16

@davidtheeviloverlord@mastodon.social We have some new kitchen equipment. As is usual with such things any service request has to be accompanied with model number, serial number, and so on. Which are hidden away on inaccessible labels that you can't read without seriously dismantling the thing. Ah! But, the manual says, you can ask the appliance for its numbers using the app, so no need to be able to read the labels! Which will be ... how much use, exactly, if the appliance fails and won't talk to the app any more? So having spotted this in advance I've printed all the numbers off from the app whilst the kit is still working. But really.

Open ##5102515