Maintenance is a verb

The prompt was one line: "using CharliPedia, draft a conversation between Alex and Down the Banksy about Tyrer's Law". ChatGPT read the live entries for Alex, Down the Banksy and Tyrer's Law through the server, and wrote this. It is reproduced as it came, and it is a proposed scene, not canon.

The scene

Alex reads the notice aloud.

Alex: “Your exciting new dashboard has removed three members of staff.”

Siobhán: From participation. They’re still on the payroll. Apparently that counts as inclusion.

Alex: What changed?

Siobhán: They replaced the reports with coloured tiles. Then replaced the labels with icons. Then moved the instructions into a video. Each improvement needs a sense the previous version didn’t.

Alex: Tyrer’s Law.

Siobhán: Sounds more respectable when you give it a surname. I was going with “you’ve done it again”.

Alex: The distinction matters. The law describes a tendency in systems. Interfaces drift towards the dominant sense of their designers. It doesn’t require anyone to want these people excluded.

Siobhán: I’m not billing them for wanting it. I’m billing them for doing it.

Alex: Fair. But if your notice makes malice the mechanism, they can demonstrate good intentions and believe they’ve answered you.

Siobhán: They’ll send a photograph of the accessibility workshop.

Alex: Exactly.

Siobhán pulls a chair up to the table.

Siobhán: All right. No trial of the human soul. We establish what worked, what changed, who lost access and who approved the change.

Alex: And who has the authority and budget to repair it.

Siobhán: You do like giving a reprimand a management structure.

Alex: I like it having somewhere to go after reception forwards it.

Siobhán: Their answer will be cost.

Alex: Then ask for the whole cost.

Siobhán: Now you’re speaking properly.

Alex: Development time is on their ledger. The employee’s extra hour finding a colleague to read the dashboard probably isn’t. Neither is the colleague’s interruption, the delayed decision or the work someone quietly stops attempting.

Siobhán: A very efficient system. Saves money by moving the expense into somebody else’s afternoon.

Alex: Your two columns need a time dimension. A cheaper release can become a more expensive service.

Siobhán: And “do nothing” needs pricing too. Leave the old system untouched forever and eventually that breaks.

Alex: Yes. We need a way to change it without repeatedly expelling people.

Siobhán: Put that in the tender. “Must support innovation without periodic expulsions.”

Alex: I would put the requirement more precisely.

Siobhán: I know. That’s why I brought a pen.

Alex: Preserve the underlying information and its structure. Test whether people can still complete the essential tasks. Make accessibility part of every release decision. Give someone responsibility for maintaining it.

Siobhán: Someone with permission to say no?

Alex: Otherwise you’ve appointed a witness.

Siobhán writes that down.

Siobhán: There she is.

Alex: Who?

Siobhán: The woman underneath the partnership strategy.

Alex: She also wants a funded maintenance plan.

Siobhán: I’ll try to contain my surprise.

Alex: One correction to your poster, though.

Siobhán: Here we go.

Alex: You’ve written “Accessibility completed” across the top.

Siobhán: It’s their wording. From the launch announcement.

Alex: Keep it. Put the date beside it. Then list what happened afterwards.

Siobhán: A certificate of decay.

Alex: Evidence of drift.

Siobhán: Yours won’t fit on the wall.

Alex: Mine goes in the attachment.

For a moment, only the pen moves.

Siobhán: And now they’ll tell us AI fixes it.

Alex: It could change the structure of the problem. Information needn’t be designed as a picture first and translated afterwards. A system could deliver it in the form the person needs.

Siobhán: Could.

Alex: Could. It could also generate a thousand beautiful interfaces that are harder to use than the first one.

Siobhán: Or make a blind employee ask a machine what their sighted colleague is allowed to know directly.

Alex: Then we ask whether the employee receives the same information, with the same authority to act on it. A persuasive answer is insufficient.

Siobhán: Especially a wrong one delivered warmly.

Alex: The standards remain. Reliable structure remains. AI gives us more possibilities; it doesn’t remove those obligations.

Siobhán: So they don’t get to sack the person maintaining the floor because they’ve bought an intelligent ceiling.

Alex: I would enjoy seeing that sentence in a procurement meeting.

Siobhán: You can have it. Invoice me.

Alex: What are you putting on the notice?

Siobhán turns the paper towards her, then reads it aloud.

Siobhán: “You budgeted for the launch. Who budgeted for keeping us in?”

Alex: Good.

Siobhán: That sounded painful.

Alex: I’m considering where to send it.

Siobhán: Front door.

Alex: Board papers.

Siobhán: Both?

Alex: Both. I’ll need your evidence by Thursday.

Siobhán: You’ll have it Wednesday. I’m not giving them a spelling mistake to discuss instead.

Char's verdict

Charlotte Joanne then asked what Char would say. ChatGPT fetched Char's entry through the server and drafted her answer, labelled "a drafted response, not canon".

Char:

“Good. Send it.

“But those three people. Has anyone asked what they need to get through tomorrow? Because the board papers can take six weeks. They’ve got work in the morning.

“Alex, get someone with authority to give them a way back in while you sort the permanent fix. Siobhán, keep the launch announcement. Especially the bit where they congratulate themselves.

“And ‘nobody meant to exclude you’. Fine. First time, I’ll listen. Once you’ve told them, they know. What happens after that needs a different explanation.

“The AI? Let me try it. Same job I could do before. If it helps, good. I’m not refusing something useful because it’s only halfway there.

“But if I spend forty minutes correcting it, don’t put those forty minutes down as independence.

“Keep the line about appointing a witness. That’s the one.

“And Wednesday, Siobhán? Send the evidence now. You can check the fucking spelling afterwards.”