At the boarding gate 37 of Terminal 3 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, I was minding my own business — slurping on iced latte, biting into a pain au chocolat, and listening to a podcast about how to thrive in an AI world.
Sitting next to the floor-to-ceiling glass window watching planes come and go, I imagined a future where robots and not pilots would manoeuvre planes. Well, all my globetrotter dreams must come to fruition before that. At 42,000 feet, I would rather rely on a human rather than a human-made twerp who will be programmed to ‘switch off and reset’ on the first signs of a severe turbulence! No kidding. The other day I asked my phone’s voice assistant to “Call dad” and it did. A few hours later, I asked the AI tool to do the same but perhaps it was in one of its moods as I heard, “Sorry, I don’t know who your dad is. In fact, I don’t know who you are.” Imagine a robot in the cockpit facing a mid-air identity-crisis of the sort. Dear me!
Dusting the crumbs off my new yoga pants which were being used everywhere else but the yoga studio, I promised to be a convert only if they invented a bot that would show up on the mat every morning on my behalf, and pass on the benefits to me through a dispatch mechanism while I sleep away to glory.
Tired of my overthinking brain, I ditched the pods and the podcast and resorted to people watching. My eyes automatically followed a rather stout woman walking in the direction of the boarding gate. A quinquagenarian, she had a dignified gait reminding me of my mom. Acknowledging my presence with a nod, she walked past me and settled into the next row of seats.
A family of three sat across her — father, mother and daughter — all swiping and scrolling on their phones with faces as long as the fiddle.
Later, the lady asked the mother politely, “Hello, are you on the flight to Chennai?” “Yes,” she replied raising an eyebrow. “Nice, would you mind looking after my luggage? I’ll only be a minute.” Pat came the answer, “I’m not responsible for your luggage. Please take your suitcase with you.” For a moment, I thought my phone’s voice-assistant has descended on her.
For some reason, the lady thanked the mother and had just turned around when the compassionless voice spluttered in a louder tone, “Excuse me, I said I’m not responsible for your luggage. Please take your suitcase with you.” And the daughter parroted the mother, proving that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I hope life gives more chances to the child to learn the joy of being kind to others. That even if one is unwilling to help (beats me why), surely there are more tactful ways to turn down a request.
As you would expect, the response made the woman ill at ease. But she maintained her calm and replied, “Oh. Okay. I didn’t hear you clearly the first time.” She positioned the suitcase on her seat and started walking towards the restrooms. Now a machine-led instruction would command me to go by the rule book. That I must immediately report any unattended item to the authorities. But it only takes a human heart to fathom that if there was anything unattended there, it was just good manners and kindness.
When she returned, the lady thanked me as if she knew by telepathy that I was guarding her luggage in her absence. That I was not some sort of a halfwit AI app that needed to be fed a code to “act human”.
No doubt the technology will soon enable us to track our luggage from anywhere. This might come in handy for the family of three, who, by the way, were still swiping and scrolling on their phones. But can there really be an app to teach humans to be human?
Thanks to the AI takeover, human beings are not only building a bot but blathering and behaving like one too.
saumya.dwivedi138@gmail.com
Published - February 02, 2025 04:15 am IST
