[SoftTalker]

Yeah it's irritating enough when humans do it, it's so transparently insincere. Just help me with my problem.

I guess I am just old now but I hate talking to computers, I never use Siri or any other voice interfaces, and I don't want computers talking to me as if they are human. Maybe if it were like Star Trek and the computer just said "Working..." and then gave me the answer it would be tolerable. Just please cut out all the conversation.

[vlovich123]

I agree it seems transparently insincere yes, but the reason it’s done is because it works on some people who either don’t detect it or need it as politeness norms and the ones who see it as insincere just ignore it and move on. Thus net, you win by doing this because it rarely if ever costs you and thus you only have upside.

[mrandish]

> The ones who see it as insincere just ignore it and move on.

Except I "just move on" to another product.

The only person I know who doesn't find this pretension annoying is my 90 year-old mother. I don't have time to waste on any company that wastes my time with pointless cut-and-paste babble. And any company actually intentionally catering to my 90 year-old mother as a primary target customer is clearly signaling they aren't for me.

A decade from now such blatant condescension from an AI will be a trope: "OMG, that's so mid-2020s AI it's painful."

[vlovich123]

It will be a trope eventually. But like I said, the cost benefit analysis puts it generally in the benefit camp. And if every next product also does this, are you actually going to not use the product? In most cases I think people put up with this & just minimize the interaction that leads to this (another benefit for the support team wording things this way since they have to field fewer support requests)