Working in journalism, I do a lot of interviews. One of my inspirations for interviewing is the podcaster John Dehlin. I greatly admire his depth of knowledge, his listening skills and his compassion.
To be a good interviewer, you first need to really be interested in other people. You need to have an open mind. Often you just need to show your source that you are there and listening, and let them tell their story in their own words.
This makes me wonder…Am I acting like a chatbot?
After all, I need people to talk. A chatbot is designed to keep people using a particular program. I too make encouraging noises of agreement and try to put people at ease. Is it really a significant difference that my interest is not just communicated but genuinely felt?
Even when I admit I don’t know something or draw connections from my lived experience, I can’t say for sure I’m un-chatbotly. A chatbot could certainly be programmed to use the phrasing, “When you said…that made me think of…” only using simple pattern prediction rather than cognition.
However, there’s a certain way chatbots come across when they are out of their depth. They sound like a guest at a party where everyone is an expert in a subject they know nothing about. “It sounds like you’re saying…” with an unspoken, “Please fill in the blanks for me before I embarrass myself!”
Somehow, I don’t think I ever sound that way, even when I ask people to give me the 101. Because my objective is more than simply keeping this interaction going. I choose to be here. Both because I believe in the power of local journalism, and for myself: my desire to grow and connect as a human.
Maybe my skill as an interviewer doesn’t lie in where I succeed in emulating a chatbot, but in where I fail. In the shared cost that I am taking time out of my day to talk with my source, just as they are setting aside time to talk with me. In the tension and the risk of two imperfect humans with their own interiority trying to understand each other and possibly failing.
Because there’s an inherent vulnerability in being observed by a sentient being who could judge you, building a connection means a real triumph of overcoming a barrier, of working together to create something new.
