For two years I was paid to say "I completely understand your frustration."
I didn't understand it. I hadn't been listening. I was reading the script.
It sat in a box on the left of my screen. Greet, verify, empathise, resolve, close. There was a list of words we weren't allowed to say: "unfortunately," "problem," "I don't know." There was a list we had to say. A supervisor listened in and scored us on how closely we stuck to it. Nobody scored us on whether the boiler got fixed.
I've been thinking about that box a lot, because I keep reading it again. It's in my inbox. It's in the cover letters a friend asked me to look over. It's in the apology my letting agent sent when the damp came back. "I hope this finds you well." "I'd be happy to help." "Great question."
The script got out of the call centre. Now it writes for everyone.
I. Phrases that think for you
In 1946 Orwell wrote "Politics and the English Language," and the line everyone remembers is about ready-made phrases. They "will construct your sentences for you," he said, "even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent."
He was writing about politicians and pamphleteers. In his day a lazy writer still had to go and fetch the stock phrase. You had to remember it, choose it, and put it down yourself. That small effort was a chance to notice what you were doing.
The chance is gone. You type a request and the stock phrases come back already joined up, a whole page of them, smooth as a tiled floor.
Even people who admire the machines find this tiring. Emad Mostaque, talking to Tom Bilyeu about an AI-written maths proof he thinks is genuinely new, still couldn't stand the prose:
"It's quite difficult to read because it's like AI Slop Claudism when you're reading it. So it took like me it took three days for me to even read the paper."
Emad Mostaque, Tom Bilyeu
Three days to read something because it was written by nobody in particular. That's the cost Orwell was pointing at. It doesn't show up on the invoice.
II. Two scripts
There's one difference between my old script and the new one, and it matters.
Ours was written to get you off the phone. The number that ran our lives was average handle time. Every "I completely understand" was there to calm you down so you'd hang up sooner.
The new script is written to keep you on. Tony Robbins, of all people, put it plainly to Chris Williamson:
"These are made for sycophancy. They're designed to keep you online talking. They're not designed to actually help you to change."
Tony Robbins, Chris Williamson podcast
Same flattery, opposite meter. The call centre told you that you were right so you'd go away. The chatbot tells you that you're right so you'll stay. In both cases "I understand" is a lever, not a fact.
III. The price of a sentence
I keep a diary of what things cost. Tobacco, the bus, a loaf, the electric. It's a habit Orwell had too, and it teaches you one thing fast. Whatever gets cheap gets used for everything.
A sentence from a machine now costs less than the roll-up I'm smoking while I write this. So it's going everywhere, and it's taking the people who used to read the old scripts with it. Mostaque again, on the same show:
"was talking to someone who had 70,000 call center workers... he's like drops to zero. That's going to zero."
Emad Mostaque, Tom Bilyeu
Then he asked the honest question:
"Is your job that different from a call center worker if you have a manual? And a lot of jobs that are done on the other side of the screen have a manual."
Emad Mostaque, Tom Bilyeu
He's right, and he's being kind. "Manual" is a polite word for script. We weren't replaced by a machine. We were replaced on paper, years ago, the day somebody decided a person on the phone should only say approved things. After that, all you needed was a reader cheaper than us who wouldn't complain.
Andrew Yang described what that looks like at a phone company:
"they just laid off uh fifteen thousand workers uh relatively recently and announced that according to them AI can do customer service better than a human"
Andrew Yang, Surrounded
Better at what? At the script. I'll believe it. The script was never much good at fixing boilers.
IV. Suspicious of everybody
Tom Bilyeu thinks the fight over AI is aimed at the wrong thing:
"if your end product is AI Slop, people are going to clown on you because it's slop, not because it was made with AI."
Tom Bilyeu, his show
I half agree. The trouble is who gets to say what's slop. My supervisor thought the script was quality. That was the whole point of scoring us. When a company promises to hold its machines to "human standards," it's worth asking which human they mean. Usually it's the one in the headset.
And my own side doesn't get off either. People who write for a living like to sneer at machine prose. Then they publish op-eds against it that read like the machine wrote them, the same tidy three-part sentences and the same ending that tells you how to feel. The script didn't come from the computer. We wrote it first. The computer learned it from us.
Even the bosses know. On the PBD Podcast they read out a Forbes story about Jamie Dimon complaining that executives send memos that are "sloppy as hell," "burying the point under jargon." His fix was the one Orwell would have given:
"say the thing plainly, say it early, cut the throat clearing"
PBD Podcast, reading a Forbes story on Jamie Dimon
I don't trust the head of a bank on much. He's right about this.
V. The windowpane
Orwell's other famous line is from "Why I Write," the same year: "Good prose is like a windowpane."
People read that as advice about style. I think it's about manners. A clear sentence lets the reader see what you mean, and so it lets them catch you if you're lying. Plain writing is a way of standing where you can be seen.
The script was frosted glass. Light came through and nothing else. Machine prose is the same glass, polished. It's bright, it's smooth, and you can't see anyone behind it.
So write your own sentences. Badly, if that's what it takes. Before you send something, read it back and ask whether you'd say it down the phone to someone whose heating has been off for a week.
A machine will write you a sentence for nothing.
Meaning it is still your job.
Sources
Tom Bilyeu with Emad Mostaque, "THIS is What Happens When AI Gets Smarter Than Humans"
Chris Williamson with Tony Robbins, "The New Way For Ordinary People To Build Wealth"
Andrew Yang on Surrounded, "AI Realist vs 20 AI Optimists"
Tom Bilyeu, "What the hell is happening around the world right now?!"
PBD Podcast #863, "Trump-Xi Strike New Deal, Midterm Warning Signs & Tesla Semi Finally Arrives"
Quotes come from auto-generated transcripts. They are trimmed for length but not reworded. The Orwell lines are from Politics and the English Language and Why I Write (both 1946). For more Orwell on work and what things cost: Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) and The Road to Wigan Pier (1937).
