I was in the middle of one of those customer service “chats” yesterday when I violated one of my deeply held personal rules. I am moving to a new place, and I had a very simple question: Does my current internet service provider offer the same product at my new address? What I imagined, in what I now realize was a haze of foolish optimism, was a one-minute exchange in which I tell the person on the other end of the chat (or, I guess, in the age of AI, “person” on the other end of the chat) my new address, and then that person or “person” checks it against a master list and comes back with an answer.

Because — and here’s where my delusional mind took over — it seemed to me that it’s a pretty open-and-shut question. You either do or do not offer internet service at a given address. There really isn’t an opportunity for nuance.