What's the Purpose of a Stupid Robot?

So, I'm all for the human-computer interaction business and I fully support the development of robots to take over all the call centers that we've already outsourced to India. I'm no robot hater.

Here's the problem- I think we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. An artificially intelligent robot that can talk to me and fix my computer issues is a great idea, but an artificially intelligent robot that can only repeat the line, "Can you please explain your last statement" ad nauseum does not give me any help on fixing a catastrophic office-wide email meltdown (if such a thing were to occur).


This is what I encountered when I attempted to use the "live chat" feature on the Earthlink support site today. Maybe its just me, but doesn't "live" imply "human", at least in the context of technical support? No, maybe it doesn't, but my recent experiments with Sweeney the wonder robot have helped me recognize obtuse robot-logic when I see it and PeggyJ, on the other end of my LiveChat was definitely of the A.I. variety. I tried to "explain my last statement" a few times, but finally gave up and just called the help-center (located in India- I asked the guy, just to make sure he was real).