I am not helped by the large pop-up that first
appeared at the beginning of the month.
This tells me that in light of regulatory changes, from September 2019
all users will need smart cards and upgraded readers to log on to the
server. Because these will be posted
“over the coming months” I need to ensure that our address and all user
addresses, emails etc are up to date.
Apart from the fact that we already know they
are, we have double-checked. Ominously
there was no facility anywhere to verify, to confirm that we had performed this
task.
So, the pop-up keeps popping up as pop-ups do,
getting in the way, opening another screen when I am trying to navigate through
the information behind it. But then, I
have an idea…
I know.
Let’s give this “webchat” a try.
All that pink box at the top of the screen has done since it first
appeared years ago is get in the way and irritate.
Perhaps it can be useful on this occasion.
I’ll ask it how to get rid it of its much
larger colleague that obscures a quarter of the screen below.
There’s a drop-down menu of course and I don’t
see as an option “how do I stop your infuriating pop-ups?”. I picked the nearest subject and type
something similar.
Now I am connected to “Cara”. Cara doesn’t understand.
Let’s put it another way. Nope - Cara still doesn’t understand.
Perhaps Cara will understand ‘Artificial “intelligence”
– fabulous!’
The one cheerful event in all this is that Cara
recognizes sarcasm and knows, apparently, when to summon help. Umar arrives in the conversation.
In answer to the natural question, Umar
confirms that he/she is a human being. Umar also advises that the pop-ups can’t be
stopped. 😢
I am a big fan of technology. We use email and other systems to an extent
which visibly upsets some of the less progressive within our industry who can’t
seem to let go of envelopes, stamps and cheques.
Online banking is a marvellous thing but features
such as those I have described above aren’t.
I worry that these things have become an acceptable norm and will
multiply and expand.
As a lawyer, I dread to think of the results of
deploying this sort of “intelligence” in the creation of online courts.
