[LINK] Telstra - talking to a machine

[Auer, Karl James]

> From: Robin Whittle [mailto:rw@firstpr.com.au]
>
> A machine should ***never*** say "I".   

Oh dear.

Why not? It is the single clearest, simplest, most direct way for the
machine to refer to itself. Humans are great context users, and the
context makes it perfectly clear what's going on. Your examples of the
chaos such messages in the first person may create are very contrived,
IMNSHO.

I (that's Karl Auer, not this email message) much prefer it to the other
obvious options like "this machine did not hear you" or "your response
was unclear", although just repeating the prompt would probably have
been best in the case you cite.

Regards, K.

"Don't anthropomorphise computers - they really hate that."

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