The Truth: Paid Intelligence

“What surprises me most is that people are so surprised.” Gabriele Börrle shakes her head and stirs her herbal tea. We are sitting in the AI ​​consulting center of a medium-sized city in Hesse. On the advice of Ms. Börrle, we arranged to meet before business hours began. “Otherwise the phone wouldn’t stand still,” she explains.

The experienced social worker – in her early 50s, wearing rimless glasses – takes a deep breath. "It was clear that this would happen. There has never been a technical innovation that was permanently free and ad-free. At some point it will be said everywhere: either with advertising or you pay."

And that's why, we learn, a grieving widow who had found solace in a dialogue with an AI is now being harassed with advertising in the middle of an intensive exchange: "Pure joy of life! Book a couple's vacation on the 'MS Romeo and Juliet'! Fun for two and endlessly!" The poor woman is of course devastated, but simply can't come up with the money for the ad-free AI chat.

Ms. Börrle smiles: "Well, if there were still ancient language lessons. The GPT in ChatGPT stands for gratis pro tempore. So free for a while. Anyone who knows Latin has a clear advantage. But it would have been enough to watch 'Black Mirror' on Netflix."

Again our expression betrays perplexity. "Don't you know? Serious education gap. This dystopian British series always takes the madness we're currently experiencing a quarter turn further. In one episode, a teacher receives a kind of virtual brain after a stroke that makes her viable again. But because she can only afford the basic tariff, the AI ​​regularly has her recite advertising messages without her being able to control it. Numbers or advertising. That's how it works."

Görrle looks at the clock and claps her hands: “So, Dennis, we’re opening,” she calls into the room next door, where a volunteer is taking over the telephone service. We can listen.

Dennis immediately has a young man in charge who was helped by an AI tool months ago. It was about a letter of congratulations on his grandma's 80th birthday. “My very rich grandma,” the caller adds contritely. “The letter turned out really well, Grandma was very happy.”

Where is the problem? Well, when the question “With or without advertising” came up recently, the AI ​​customer decided in favor of the monthly fee: “Unfortunately, my account is often in overdraft. And I must have missed a reminder,” the trainee admits.

What was the AI ​​doing? She sent his grandmother excerpts from a chat with his brother: "Hopefully the apparent dead woman will die soon. I need the money very quickly." That was it for the inheritance. Now the AI ​​should get everything. This is how quickly the intelligence sorts out its debt collection problems.

An older gentleman enters the consultation room. “You’re the AI ​​company, right?” he shouts. “I want my money back!” It takes a while for him to understand where he is. Then he reports. He didn't see the need to pay for a month in which he didn't use the AI ​​at all. So he ignored several requests for payment.

Finally, his distraught niece called yesterday: she had caused a fatal accident and needed 30,000 euros. "I immediately thought: Grandchildren's trick! And hung up. Then I called my niece to see if everything was okay. But she was really upset and apparently in a police car. So I withdrew the money and handed it over to a courier. But when I called my niece on the landline in the evening to see if she was free again, she didn't know what I was talking about."

Ms. Börrle nods: “Unfortunately, the AI ​​is now better at the grandchild trick than the criminals.” She fills out a form with the man, even though they both know it's as pointless as reporting a stolen bicycle.

During the following two hours we experience many such fates. A seventh grader criticizes a school essay in which the AI ​​inserted an advertisement for Ozempic, which the overweight German teacher didn't find funny at all. A route planner intentionally led a defaulting payer to the Feldberg in the Black Forest instead of to the Feldberg lake landscape in Mecklenburg.

The initial enthusiasm for AI seems to be fading since the services cost something. But for many consumers, the dependency is well advanced.

Two weeks after our visit we call Gabriele Börrle to coordinate the original sounds. She praises our interest with a lot of empathy and chats about the latest developments. But in the middle of the conversation she asks whether we actually already have the new “Cleanman 3000” vacuum robot. It's great and only costs 499 euros until tonight. We'll hang up immediately.