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DigitalIntelligence
A Bizarre And Hilarious Story Most Likely Caused By Artificial Intelligence
2021-06-21
This is an astonishing story of a Buffalo, New York woman.
Imagine you wake up one day and see over one hundred parcels delivered in front of your home. You first think it may be a dream. Then, you pinch yourself and notice that you are awake and it is the reality. And they keep coming! What would you do?
This is precisely what happened to Jillian, who lives in Buffalo, New York. As a vibrant state, New York never runs out of exciting news. Locals hardly experience any dull moments. This time artificial intelligence (AI) favoured this great state in tech news.
Let me introduce a recent story of Jillian Scarcello Cannan recognized by my AI news feed, tagged as a "cool woman". She is cool because Jillian turned a bizarre situation into a good cause with a bit of sense of humour and altruistic behaviour.
AI is not mature enough to think a single person cannot need massive amounts of goods. If it were an average human, he or she would question the anomaly as the first check. So let me elaborate on it. If AI makes an error, it can be at a massive scale. This is a bizarre yet hilarious story within the context of AI.
I came across Jillian's story after reading the tech news and watching a few videos from the US TV stations.
Here is what I found.
According to NBC News, Jillian received "Lots of packages. Some on pallets dropped off by huge delivery trucks. Over 100 packages later, Cannan, of Buffalo, New York, was inundated with thousands of items she did not order or want. She initially thought the boxes were supplies her business partner ordered, but after opening some of them, she found they contained thousands of silicone support frames to use inside face masks in both adult and children's sizes."
More notable about Jillian’s response is: “I’m trying to put a positive spin on it. I have four little kids, and I’m trying to show them how to make lemonade out of lemons and just kind of run with it.”
You may wonder about what a silicone support frame could be. I took a screen capture from Jillian's demonstration in a local news station interview embedded to Jillian's Facebook page.
Facebook is a great social media tool to understand details of amazing situations globally.
"Update on Package Gate 2021. After a few days of back-and-forth with Amazon, we are going to put together a decorate your own face mask kit for children's hospitals. Amazon is going to donate the supplies for the kits to help make this a reality, and we are going to take this opportunity to do something fun for the kiddos/healthcare workers who can still use the mask brackets".
Jillian's Facebook page is full of public reactions and responses. To give you an idea, I took this screen capture from this post. The sentiments are cheerful and inspiring.
More interestingly, Jillian has become very famous for this incident. If you check Google, you may see thousands of entries associated with this bizarre situation.
As a great service company, Amazon responded with a letter. Jillian shared the letter from Amazon Executive Customer Relations on her page. The note is positive and instructive.
What can we learn from this hilarious situation?
The primary point is to report unusual parcel delivery cases to authorities. In this case, it was funny, but sometimes we may face a difficult situation.
This bizarre incident shows that AI still has a long way to go. It can surprise us and even scare us sometimes, but as an AI professional, I believe that there is nothing to be feared. All we need is to gradually understand, accept, and put our energies to improve it for the benefits of society.
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