Mattress Shoppers Beware: AI Is Here
887 words. Letter to the editor.
I am 62. I worked as a computer programmer, so I am used to dealing with technological change. Computer hardware and software comes and goes, and more and more things are automated. That’s the way of the world. But even armed with that understanding, I was not prepared for what happened when my wife and I went shopping for a new mattress and box spring the other day.
The salesperson showed us a very nice mattress priced at over two thousand dollars. That sounded expensive to me, but I know that it’s easy to get sticker shock for big-ticket items that you buy only every twenty years or so. So I resisted the urge to howl in amazement like a rube, and instead I played along and asked smoothly, “Gulp, two thou—. I mean does that include the box spring?” The salesperson laughed a winsome laugh. Regarding me as one does a befuddled great-grandfather, she placed her hand on my arm and said, “Nobody buys those any more! What you want is an adjustable smart base.”
Sensing trickery, I nonetheless asked, “What is an adjustable smart base?” She then led us to a display bed and instructed us to lie down. I didn’t want to do it, for I hate placing not just my mind but also my body into the practiced hands of a salesperson. I know that they think that once you start following their directions they have made the sale, and they start working their voice and their facial expressions to make you feel obligated to agree with them. Well, when this demonstration began in earnest I could not agree to a single thing she said. For I soon learned the truth: an adjustable base is basically an artificial intelligence that lurks beneath your bed just like the boogeyman of your childhood, watching you and making unbidden adjustments to your bed while you innocently slumber!
Oh, the mattress was comfortable enough at first, but then the rumbles and the gyrations began. The bed vibrated like the old coin-operated beds in cheap motels. Then the head of the bed rose up, then returned to horizontal. Then our feet were raised and lowered, and then a bulge developed under the lumbar area of our spines. I called out, “What is happening? I don’t think I like this!” The saleslady feverishly worked the remote control like the carny running the tilt-a-whirl at the county fair. She laughed and said, “Don’t you just love it?” I guess Rule #1 in salesperson school is “Ignore what the customer says,” because there I was clearly shouting that I did not love it.
That’s when she dropped the biggest bomb of the day. She said, “This bed detects when you snore, and it makes you stop.” Chills. I sat up quickly lest the bed decide that it needed to make me “stop” doing anything—such as breathing. I asked, “How in the world does it know you are snoring. Is this thing listening to us? And how does it make you stop? Does a hand emerge and clamp itself over your mouth and nose until you “stop”?” The salesperson laughed her “Oh, Grandpa” laugh and said, “No! It just raises the head of the bed!” Well that’s not good. You see, my wife routinely sleeps with her head at the foot of the bed. This is for reasons having to do with how and where our cat sleeps, and with my wife’s sensation of hot and cold. It doesn’t matter why—it just is. So that means if I snore and the AI-controlled bed raises my head, it will be raising her feet on high, causing blood to rush from her lower extremities. Then if there’s a fire—say due to our AI-controlled stovetop deciding from the ruckus in the bedroom that it’s time to fire up a pot of tea, and our AI-infused paper towel rack has sidled over too close to the stove—my wife will have numb legs and I will have to carry her bodily from the burning house, assuming the bed even lets me get up.
What happened to the unspoken sleeper/bed contract? It goes something like this: you (the bed) just sit there without moving; I (the sleeper) will sleep on you. If any movement is necessary, I (the sleeper) will perform said movement while you (the bed) just sit there without—I repeat without—moving. This seems obvious and simple and yes I know exactly how old I sound. Well, I am old, in no small part because my pleasingly stupid bed has never seen fit to start shimmying and shaking and controlling my breathing and otherwise causing mayhem.
You may say that I am overreacting and that none of that is very likely to happen. But you know what would make all of that bad scenario not only unlikely but downright impossible? I’ll tell you: sleeping on a good old, plain, immobile, stupid mattress on top of a plain old stupid box spring. Call me an old fuddy-duddy if you like, but I will keep buying box springs until they cease to exist, and after that I’m going back to feather beds, and after that it’s a straw pallet on the floor. You can keep your AI-infused gadgetry. I prefer to live.
This work was published in the Minot Daily News on June 10, 2023.
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