“I’m your personal AI assistant. I can help with any questions about your site or account.” Anyone who knows me well is aware of my above-average verbal fluency. But that comes from a lifetime of communication with fellow members of my species, where with a little give and take, a little clarification, a smile, a gesture, I can get my point across, even if it involves a little effort on both sides. But with greater and greater frequency, I am (make that ‘we are’) being asked to have a dialog, a conversation with something non-human, in which you ask a question and an answer appears on your phone or computer. I’m not as clueless about AI as the current U.S. Secretary of Education, who confused AI with A-1, a bottled marinade you can slather on a steak, but I’m never satisfied by outperforming the dumbest person in the room.

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