I cannot over emphasize how much I don’t want a computer teaching me to talk. The only reason this is a problem is that we’re relying on computers for communication too much in the first place.
Fair enough. My point is that any time spent communicating in texts, emails, chat apps, etc. diminishes your ability to communicate in meaningful ways. Electronic communication is incapable of fulfilling the requirements for effective communication to take place. At best it’s useful for one off exchanges of information. Or it takes a long time to craft a well thought out piece of writing, which the vast majority of us are not doing. We think we can just substitute a Zoom call for an in person meeting. This is brought on by the fact that we think the internet is a solution to problems in and of itself instead of just a tool. Asking the internet to in turn teach us how to talk only makes the problem worse.
Doing the work of spending time with people in real life is the best possible solution for learning how to communicate meaningfully and effectively. We can’t offload all our problems to AI. We’re just creating different problems.
Case and point: this comment thread, while giving us the ability to transfer sterile information is devoid of all the nuance of an in person conversation.
