HAL 9000 Has A Modern Counterpart

If you thought HAL 9000 was scary, wait until you meet the robot customer service AI at SQUARE. Their mutual lack of humanity makes both of them stunning examples of badly programmed systems.

HAL 9000 is a fictional artificial intelligence character and the main antagonist in Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey series. First appearing in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer) is a sentient artificial general intelligence computer that controls the systems of the Discovery One spacecraft and interacts with the ship’s astronaut crew.

Both of them are examples of simplistic money-saving solutions with no access to human override. This kind of robot “intelligence” fails spectacularly when presented with data that does not meet the guidelines set by programmers with limited real-life experience.

The robot customer service system at Square was installed to save money on human customer service staff and it does everything possible to keep you from contacting a live human being. It has a low tolerance for input data errors and a simple error in entering a CVV code can lock up your funds and mark you as a high-risk customer. 

Once the Square Customer Service System has marked you as a high-risk customer, it effectively screens you from contacting a live customer service agent by presenting you with a canned set of recordings when you call for help. Text messages sent to the help center get canned replies that refer you to emails sent previously and are no longer available.

I went to Square in mid-October looking for an invoicing and virtual terminal service to replace the one I have been using for the past ten years. I ran test transactions through their system to see how reliable the system was, but I did not test it thoroughly enough. I invoiced a customer and that transaction was completed with no problem. I used the virtual terminal system for another customer and the transaction was denied twice with no reason for the error message. (The customer had given the CVV code in the wrong order.) When I entered the correct CVV code the transaction went through, but Square froze my funds and indicated I was a high-risk customer. Square has indicated that my money will be sent to my bank account, but I am unable to get a date for this transfer.

If you enjoy interacting with a robot system that can freeze your account and deny access to a human counterpart, Square will give you that experience in spades. You can relive the experience of astronaut Dave being locked out of the spaceship airlock with nobody to hear you plead for help.

I have the feeling that I am not the only customer who has been locked out of the Square airlock because the system they have erected to keep customers from contacting real humans is carefully designed to keep us from registering complaints with responsible people working there.

The one human contact I made in the early stages of this catastrophe was a soft-spoken person of foreign extract who apologized because he could not help me straighten this matter out by simply checking with my customer and verifying the transaction. He said I would have to prove to the system that I was a real corporation.

Unfortunately, the system has already given me its answer, “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that”

If you wish to trust your business to the Square version of HAL, have a backup plan ready. You will need it.

If you would like to see what an AI expert says about these systems, see this presentation:

The Real Reason to be Afraid of Artificial Intelligence | Peter Haas | TEDxDirigo

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THERE ARE SPIRITUAL TRAPS FOR US THAT NEED BIGGER WARNING SIGNS


You are exposed to a range of spiritual traps every day and most of you never realize it. These traps attract your attention and keep you fixated on some horrible situation for weeks on end. They can be images or text and they are designed to attract and hold your attention and move you to action. They are hypnotic and if you do not learn to ignore them, they can cause permanent harm to you spiritually.

These traps are designed to push your emotional buttons and they do this to an amazing degree. The messages they contain may be righteous or evil, but the result is always the same. They put you in an angry state for long periods of time and you attract spirits who are drawn to the prospect of revenge and retribution. Since the messages are crafted to create anger, they are almost always presented in the most alarming way possible and avoid any sign of balance in their rhetoric.


You will find little effort to defuse the situation being given exposure. One side will be portrayed as evil and the other side will be blameless victims of the other side. If you try to join in on the discussions, you will find that any attempt to put forth a rational explanation for the current situation will be heartily rejected by both sides.

I know that you are concerned about the insanity and corruption that exists in the world and in your chosen city, but I have an urgent suggestion that might improve your health and longevity. You are following the events of the day and participating in the discussions, but if you do not vary your diet of news, life will not go well with you.

A steady diet of observing and reporting on evil will put you into an emotional tone level that is not prosurvival and the reason is that this activity ATTRACTS spirits who are into rage and frustration, etc. If you can add some hilarity or even some sardonic humor, you may find that life will become more appealing. You might even consider looking at the amusing things about each of these disasters and be able to report these catastrophes without going downtone emotionally.

We attract spirits based on what we are reading and writing about. If you want courageous and light-hearted spirits, vary your attitude and your reading habits. If you have ever looked at long-time Scientology critics, you will see what I mean. It has been a long time since any of them smiled and they all look older than they should. Maintaining a state of outrage is a form of slow suicide no matter what cause you are espousing. There are so many reasons to be outraged that you can be drawn into a state where you are slowly transformed into a bitter, unhappy example of human refuse unless you realize that your behavior is absolutely self-destructive.

When your life is consumed with thoughts of revenge and retribution, you become human garbage and you attract beings who feed on your emotions and keep them stirred up. It is not the cause you espouse that will kill you, it is the retention of angry emotions that will eventually do you in.

If you are focusing on villains and victims, you are risking your life and your future. You can control the beings you attract, so put your attention on finding things to admire in the world and help those who are working to put sanity into civilization again.

You won’t regret it.

Posted in Achieving Peace of Mind | 1 Comment

SRT Can Be Compared To Spiritual Archaeology

Archaeology is the study of the human past using material remains. SRT studies our spiritual past through spiritual traces that endure for unlimited times. Traces of our human past are often buried under many feet of earth and other debris and may require months of painstaking excavation to uncover these priceless clues to the history of this planet.

Archaeological clues, being matter, have a lifetime of thousands of years. Spiritual clues persist intact for many millions of years and can be recovered in a matter of hours using the appropriate process since they are captured in the memories of immortal spiritual beings. Here is just one example.

A person destroys his life by compromising his integrity and doing things that harm others financially or socially to remedy a problem and then is punished so thoroughly that the memory sticks with him forever. Millions of years pass and he is still carrying this memory even though he is on another planet and has not had a body of any sort since that event. He is currently attached to some earth person and only surfaces when this earth person does something that resembles his original effort at solving a problem. In non-technical terms, he and his problem are haunting this host and affecting his ability to deal with life.

In an SRT session, the counselor spots the presence of this tormented spirit by the reaction he provides to a simple question posed to the host to whom he is attached. The SRT counselor and the client host join forces to locate the tormented spirit and engage him in conversation. Once the spirit has described what he did and the punishment visited upon him, the counselor gets him to look at what problem he was trying to solve and why it seemed to be a reasonable solution at the time.

The solution always appeared to be reasonable or it wouldn’t have happened, but invariably, the solution was based on false or missing data, because it would have been successful if based on correct data and estimation of effort. The events that stick with a being for all eternity are those which went wrong and the reasons are still unknown because a being is always trying to be right, even when doing something destructive.

Uncovering the mystery of why something went wrong and is still bothering a being millions of years later is an adventure greater than any archaeological discovery. We do this every day in Spiritual Rescue Technology sessions and we don’t even get our hands dirty. Furthermore, every discovery adds to the wealth of our spiritual knowledge and increases the range of solutions provided by SRT counseling.

Photograph by Richard Hewitt Stewart

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I Suggest Daily Solo Sessions For All Of You

I enjoy delivering spiritual counseling sessions and do this almost every day, but I will never be able to handle the vast number of spirits we have to deal with on my own. Every one of us is in daily contact with hundreds of active spirits who are trying to guide us or influence us or even get revenge on us. I can teach you to communicate with your spirits in a caring way and get them to assist you in the course of your daily life, but you need to establish communication with them so that they are assisting you every moment of your day. This can be started through frequent SRT Solo Sessions.

If you have not done so already, download this free Solo Session Handbook and use it every day until you can do a solo session without referring to it. Eventually, you will progress to communicating with your helpful spirits on a continuing basis whenever you are creating something or solving a problem.

https://icedrive.net/s/BCTB5NtFNbktbj8SZ8X3YkY2ffB1

At some point, it will dawn on you, if it has not done so already, that your spiritual teammates are a vital part of your daily life and their support and advice will make your life ever so much easier than struggling on your own.

You will occasionally run into spiritual situations that you cannot handle on your own and you should feel free to contact me for assistance or for a session or two. As more people become users of Spiritual Rescue Technology, you will have others to turn to for assistance. In the meantime, read all of my books on Spiritual Rescue Technology and arm yourself with the knowledge they contain.

Contrary to what you may have been taught by other spiritual workers, dealing with spirits on this planet is not a “Once and Done” deal. There are trillions of disembodied spirits and you can pick up more of them every day wherever you go. You need to assemble your team of helpful spirits and use them like advisors and protectors so that you can achieve your goals regardless of the spiritual turmoil that exists all around you. When you learn to recruit spiritual helpers and manage them effectively, life becomes a different game entirely. We have barely begun to see what can be done in this regard, but the results so far promise a brighter future for those who master spiritual communication.

Posted in Achieving Peace of Mind, Achieving Your Full Potential | Leave a comment