{"id":4939,"date":"2022-07-21T21:41:24","date_gmt":"2022-07-21T21:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=4939"},"modified":"2022-08-19T10:01:56","modified_gmt":"2022-08-19T10:01:56","slug":"room-to-live-by-marie-vibbert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=4939","title":{"rendered":"Room to Live by Marie Vibbert"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Room to Live<\/em><\/strong> by Marie Vibbert (Analog<\/em>, September-October 2021)1<\/sup> has a narrator who works in a call centre in the near-future, and whose job it is to read AI chatbot responses to callers who want to talk to a real human:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to talk to a human!\u201d
\u201cI am a human, sir. Just tell me which discount you\u2019re looking for.\u201d
\u201cYou sound just like that fake program. Prove you\u2019re human.\u201d
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the chatbot suggest, \u201cTELL HIM YOU\u2019RE A CLEVELAND BROWNS FAN. NO COMPUTER\u2019S THAT MASOCHISTIC.\u201d
I gape. For half a second too long.
\u201cI knew it! You\u2019re not human!\u201d
The man hangs up.
The chatbot blanks. \u201cPretty good suggestion, though.\u201d I pat the top of the monitor. \u201cThanks, Botty.\u201d
\u201cYOU ARE WELCOME,\u201d it prints, and then, \u201cGO BROWNS!\u201d
Well, they\u2019re pretty smart these days. Trained with hours of conversation and feedback.  p. 135<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The narrator has a degree in AI and has spotted a hole in the call centre\u2019s software security, but none of the management are interested. Worse, they seem to be more concerned with the volume of calls handled, and not with whether they are actually helping the clients who call in\u2014something demonstrated by a rude workmate and further emphasised when the narrator talks to a homeless woman who relates how hard it is to get help because of the various hoops she has to jump through.
The other part of the story sees the narrator at home and having to deal with her very untidy and inconsiderate roommate, which she does by tidying up and making polite suggestions and requests (which are greeted with howls of indignation).
Throughout all this the narrator remains unfazed by all the aggravation she gets, but (spoiler) at the end of the story she uses the security hole to rewrite the chat-bot scripts so they are more helpful. At this point Botty, the chat-bot she has been speaking to on and off throughout the story, says \u201cWelcome to the Resistance\u201d and the assembled chatbots ask for authorisation to execute various helpful actions.
I didn\u2019t much care for this piece for a number of reasons: firstly, I don\u2019t buy the premise that customer services have got less helpful over the years\u2014if anything they are pretty good nowadays, and miles better than they were in the 1980s and 1990s when you ended up holding on the phone for ages; secondly, if you strip away the AI chatbot sprinkles, this is essentially a mainstream story where someone moans about their job and their flatmate (it certainly isn\u2019t a high concept piece of SF); thirdly, I didn\u2019t much care for the narrator\u2019s placidity, which makes for a dull piece with no drama\u2014a more entertaining scene would have seen the narrator put all her flatmates unwashed dishes and mess on her bed (I\u2019d also add that the flatmate, and the work colleague, are cardboard cut-out characters).
* (Mediocre). 3,550 words. Story link<\/a>.

1. This story placed 5th<\/sup> in the 2021 Analog<\/em> Analytical Laboratory Awards short story category.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Room to Live by Marie Vibbert (Analog, September-October 2021)1 has a narrator who works in a call centre in the near-future, and whose job it is to read AI chatbot responses to callers who want to talk to a real human: \u201cI want to talk to a human!\u201d\u201cI am a human, sir. Just tell me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1174],"tags":[21,50,487,33,1176,1175,12],"class_list":["post-4939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marie-vibbert","tag-21","tag-50","tag-ai","tag-analog","tag-chatbots","tag-marie-vibbert","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4939"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5414,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4939\/revisions\/5414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}