The Grand Illusion
I’ve used the same lawn maintenance service for over ten years, ever since I decided (not that my wife the professor didn’t have some say in the matter) that it probably wasn’t the best idea for me to be dealing with heavy lawnmowers on large slopes that approach forty degrees in some places, especially at my then-hardly-young age. Not that I needed much convincing, since, as a teenager I mowed lawns for three long summers, and I’ve disliked mowing ever since.
I’ve always made the point of paying for a month’s service in advance by mailing a check, and I’ve never had any trouble with the service, until this month, when I suddenly realized I wasn’t getting my weekly emailed invoice. Then several sprinklers malfunctioned (beyond simple replacement) followed by a split somewhere in a main water feed.
But when I went to call the service, I looked them up on the internet to check the telephone number and discovered they had a glitzy new website which suggested I use it to schedule the necessary repairs. The only problem was that the “new” system wouldn’t recognize either my email or my street address. The new system’s chatbot was no help, either.
So, I used the old-fashioned telephone, and I got a helpful real person on the line, except she couldn’t schedule the sprinkler repair because I either had to have a credit card on file or fill out and return an email form that she would send to me. She tried four times to send the form. The system said that it sent it, but I never received anything, even though the system had the correct email address.
After more hassles I called back and got another helpful person. He found me on the system, but nothing still arrived by email. In the end, after almost half an hour, between the two of us, we figured out that my mailing street address was “wrong,” that is, that it was listed as “south,” followed by the street name. Five years ago, that was the correct postal address, but then USPS removed the “south,” despite the fact that we’re still “south.” For the most part, that hasn’t been a problem, but every so often, relatives and friends using the “old” address have letters rejected. The thing is: we’re the only house on the street, which is only a half-block long; there’s no other street with any similar name; and we’ve lived here for 33 years.
With that one little change, all of a sudden, the lawn service system could send me the sprinkler request form and all my back invoices.
But it took three human beings over two hours to “solve” what never should have been a problem, and none of us, including the tech on the system, could say why a single word in the database not even associated directly with the email address could block sending emails to me.
And the tech gurus wonder why people are leery of AI?
LEM, such a typical story of our modern times. I was always pragmatic about new methodologies when I worked at my large corporate R&D organization – embrace the new when it proves itself, be skeptical of the new when it’s part of an industry fad. With that, my mantra was always…”just because you can doesn’t mean you should”.
Tech bros seem so clueless
Their products so useless
I only wish they’d stop
And the AI bubble pop
My great uncle was a doctor in Colorado. When cars started to become more common mygreat aunt insisted that he buy one and retire his horse and buggy. Great uncle hated that car. With the horse and buggy he could tie off the reins and nap when returning from patient visits. The car? No.
Now people are developing self-driving cars.
Give AI a few years. (So funny when tech complaints appear on thr Internet!)
“So funny when tech complaints appear on thr Internet!”
Fair enough…but how about tech-bro complaints?
Complaining about tech on the Internet, which is all tech, is funny as h—. Tech-bro complaints are just normal human.
You could also say that writing an angry letter to the editor of a newspaper is equally hilarious, given the amount of tech involved in printing. Are we required to never complain about any technology, just because we use some of it?
Only if being laughed at bothers you that much.
Lourain, I hope you’ll find a way to adjust your message.
I’m old, and I make no secret of it. I don’t have the energy I once had, like you need to learn new things, and I don’t have the mental agility, also needed.
Well, no big deal, isn’t it? I’m retired, so I don’t have to. Do I?
And yet, I’m forced more and more onto the internet. I can’t go to the library to pick up tax forms anymore. I can’t go to the bank I’ve used for decades and see a teller.
I have to use the internet.
I don’t have any young people around to help me with cybersecurity questions. I don’t have anyone to help with questions about new tools.
I have fewer and fewer choices. I am more and more uneasy at what I’m forced to do.
Is my computer clean? My router? My phone? I hope so, but I don’t know.
I’m trapped.
If you find that funny, by all means laugh.
KevinJ, you are not alone. In fact, the potential security issues are much worse than most people realize.
The issue is that most of the technology today is based on “free” software packages, largely written by volunteers on their own time. If someone creates a useful piece of code then others will incorporate that into their software, to which someone else will then add another layer, ad infinitum. The problem is that, over time, it’s possible that the lower layers become unsupported. The cartoon (“Dependency” – https://xkcd.com/2347/) was originally somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but lately has become much closer to reality. On TheRegister.com (techie news site) over the last few months I’ve read about the maintainers for multiple key lower-level packages retiring with no one volunteering to take over, or people discovering other packages that haven’t been maintained for years. This rapidly becoming a major issue as new bug-finding tools (e.g. Anthropic’s Claude Mythos) are finding significant bugs in areas that have been presumed safe for many years. AI tools are also finding ways of chaining multiple packages in unexpected ways that result in even more vulnerabilities.
I was a developer and system/network administrator for decades before I retired a few years ago, and I can’t keep track of the potential security issues. And I’ve found that most of the younger generations don’t seem to understand the issues or even care.
My suggestion is be somewhat paranoid about what you allow and where. For example, I don’t allow anything on our phones that could cause significant harm if a phone is compromised and I restrict things such as access to banks, etc. to just one of our computers that I do my best to secure. And even there I try to plan what I might do if that computer gets compromised.
When it comes to technology, a quote from the movie “The Fly” is appropriate: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
In tbe UK, most sites just request your post(Zip) code and then offer you a list of addresses from which you pick your own.
This is possible likely as the UK is small enough to have a single database.
Interestingly as a side note, the most accurate address data used to be held by the broadband providers as the postal service normally just stops at the house. If that house is subdivided into multiple occupancy (increasingly the case in cities) then they will have separate broadband accounts. This accuracy will be likely diluted as more people choose to have 5G cellnet access.
The problem was bad design and insufficient testing. It has little to do with AI. The issue is that people don’t believe what goes into making a competent system. It’s the same when someone writes a few paragraphs and thinks that is the same as writing 40+ published novels.
The problems often seem to be a mix of AI amorality and human stupidity. I’ve just been reading about Starbuck’s PR disaster in South Korea (26% drop in income overnight), where AI suggested a slogan that referenced a well-known meme that was associated with a famous and controversial historic case – and apparently no-one read the background links. Worth reading the whole story: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/06/starbucks-south-korea-tank-day-promotion-blunder
Rather like trying to sell Chevy Novas in Mexico. (No va.)
Another example: my wife wrote a chapter for a book. It was returned with an obviously AI generated list of 21 instances of “plagiarism”. Clearly no human had checked it, since nearly half of the list was quotations from her own writings, two were the same phrase quoted from and attributed to the same third party, and the remainder were random sequences of seven words, including phrases like “this varies significantly by age, and sex”, associated with an equally random other piece where the same phrase occurred. Even more randomly, it decided that the (just long enough) sequence of her own name, email and university affiliation must have been plagiarised.
Glad you got the biz relationship straightened out. That could have gotten awkward. I think you were lucky to find a phone number answered by actual, responsible people – that can be near impossdible, since many companies today seem want to force you to talk to a machine.
I have had half dozen or so contacts who are behind managed voice and mail systems who could _not_ get an email to me. Happily, none was critical and in about half we just agreed to forget about it.
To KevinJ: Since I live in the same reality (I don’t even drive any more) I laugh at the way every generation adjusts (or doesn’t adjust) to this ever-changing world. It seems that every generation reaches a point where the changing world freaks them out. I laugh because today people are using tech to criticize tech. Since I first encountered what became the Internet back in the 80s old flaws have been corrected or superseded, to be replaced by new ones. And so it goes.
The problem with flaws is two-fold: first there are quality problem flaws which become evident with usage; but second are the “flaws” which are difficult to “laugh” away because they are intentional. It seems to me that tech companies create “choices and improvements” which guide users where they did not realize they were going. Somewhat like the legislation produced by politicians who are concerned about the next election because they need the job rather than because they wish to continue to serve their constituents.