I’ve had it. Had it with the wholesale push to remove humans or the human touch from nearly every single activity of my daily life: CVS wants me to check out with a machine, so does the supermarket. And I’ve spent untold hours trying to get past all the customer service robotic gatekeepers on the phone, shouting "representative" until I’ve strangled my vocal cords. Overall, this intrusive technology is frustrating most of the time and coldly distancing all of the time.
Which is why news that the MBTA is doing away with the voice of Frank Oglesby just about sent me over the edge.
Since 1995, Oglesby’s rich, deep baritone has been the voice of the T, announcing the arrival times of the trains. But, alas, the powers that be decided to phase out his warm, honeyed tones in favor of a text-to-speech robotic voice. Oglesby retired from the T in 2016 but has continued to do station announcements and other voice work, including announcements here at GBH 89.7.
In a statement, the MBTA said it was “proud” of the partnership with Oglesby, but the change will allow for real-time adjustments. While I knew Oglesby wouldn’t be the voice of the T forever, I expected the MBTA would eventually hire another human announcer. After all, that’s what happens when beloved sports announcers retire — nobody is replacing them with a robot. At least not yet. Why not keep Oglesby’s human voice and use the text speech for emergencies?
By now many of you are assuming I’m just another raving Luddite shouting into the wind. Nope. I use technology and love the ease that much of it offers to accomplish tasks faster. However, I’ll jump off a website in a nano second if the page fails to load quickly or is hard to navigate. But the headlong rush to embed automation without considering the potential downside is problematic.
Wegman’s grocery chain shut down its self-checkout app after grappling with increased theft from folks who figured out how to scam the scanners — bypassing the electric eye or subbing ground turkey for expensive prime rib.
Self-checkout is cold and inefficient to me. I’m in the regular check-out line because I can talk to a real person if I have any issues. I felt the same way in 2016 when the toll booth workers were replaced by electronic gantries. COVID accelerated the robot replacement of humans when 40 million jobs went away at the peak of the pandemic.
A Pew research study earlier this year tapped into Americans’ mixed feelings about the “scientific and technological developments” technologies based on artificial intelligence and so called ”human enhancement applications.” Pew noted ambivalence reflected in the survey results, with 45% saying they were both excited and concerned while 37% were more concerned than excited and far fewer —18% — more excited than concerned.
The 37% of us who are more concerned must fight to keep the human connection. Hundreds of Greater Bostonians are doing just that. They’ve signed a Change.org petition to keep Frank Oglesby as the voice of the MBTA. The petition urges signers to “Tell the MBTA how important it is that our buses and trains have a real person announcing stops, not a computer.” Where do I sign?
