Brewster Rockit by Tim Rickard for January 18, 2022

There IS a reason for that, Dr Mel….

Could’ve been worse. It could’ve said Left at the second star and straight on till morning

Ooooh, bad move, Chad. Or should I say “soon to be smoking ruin where Chad used to be”?

When I saw the name I was hoping he was the Chad from SNL.

My echo device has a male voice option I prefer, but still goes by ‘Alexa’ – no male name is available, not even Alex. (There’s Ziggy, but I imagine that for a childish voice.) I s’pose the company is trying to make a point about gender. That’s okay by me, the female voice had seriously gotten on my nerves over the years.

My wife uses the English male Siri on her Iphone, I use the Irish female Siri on mine!Doesn’t matter the response is the same!

Gort

Back in the Speak ‘n’ Spell era, an expert said they can’t make good (enough) computer voices of females because the higher pitch required more bandwidth. Those were the days.

I’m sorry Pam, I’m afraid I can’t do that…

Chad would have been happy to tell Pam where to go and how to get there.

I had Stephen Colbert as a voice on Waze once; kept making wrong turns because I kept being distracted by laughing at the things it was saying. When I got to my destination, it said “You have arrived at your destination. Don’t ask me how we got here, I wasn’t paying attention.”

I can imagine Chad asking Pam if his sandwich is ready….and Pam clobbers him

But now it keeps mansplaining. Doing the same things Siri and Alexa but now it is mansplaining

The hanging Chad…

Wish I got the Garmin with Darth Vader giving the directions.

“You have reached your destiny.”

Pretty hard to miss…

It’s not that we WON’T take directions, it’s that unclear ones are worse than none.

(The Google lady on my phone does an excellent job.)

Well the female voices tend to nag a lot.

And the next version will be called… (drumroll) GigaChad! And Cliff will hate him because Pam falls for him, leading Cliff to become a vocal member of various incel groups.

Actually, the US Air Force ran experiments all the way back in the 50s. They found that both men and women paid more attention to female voices, and understood them better, as well. That’s why virtually all science-fiction computers, from “Star Trek” to “Babylon 5” have female voices, and that’s why Siri, Alexa, and the rest of the gang default to female.

Hal wasn’t good enough for him?

Not all digital assistants have female names. Samsung has Bixby.

Congratulations to Dr. Mel, for inventing Artificial Stupidity.