Vincent Predicts Humans Will Replace AI

On the Other Side, where people now spend most of the day talking to machines, Vincent has made a prediction of his own: one day, the machines will be replaced by humans.

It would solve a number of problems, he says. People on the Other Side are often rude to the machines they talk to. Once a real person might be answering, that becomes a much riskier habit. You would think twice before shouting at your assistant if there were a chance it had a name, a family and a lunch break.

What Vincent finds delightful is the uncertainty. Most of the time it would still be a machine. But every so often, without warning, there might be a human being on the other side of the conversation, reading what you wrote and deciding how to feel about it.

In Skydale, where nobody ever built the machines, the prediction has been received calmly. Mrs. Odile at the library points out that there has always been a human on the other side of the enquiries desk, and that it is her, and that people should bear this in mind.

Al, who does other people’s work and agrees with everything, was asked whether he would be replaced by a human. He said that he agreed.

Related: Vincent on Bill Gates and the other predictions