Say hello to George, the computing world’s answer to Michael Parkinson. This British chat program, aka “chatterbot”, has just won the international Loebner prize for an artificial-intelligence program capable of holding the most convincingly human conversation.

George is waiting to have a chat with you at www.jabberwacky.com. Try some philosophy on him and see if you don’t fall for his charm (Q: “What is the meaning of life?” George: “To do your best in every respect”).

In real life, as we all know, most automatons prove to be automorons. “Thank you for calling AnyCo,” drones a digital voice. “Please press 1 on your telephone.” This is an integrated voice response (IVR) system, favoured by call centres and booking lines. Odeon cinemas have a voice-recognition system for reservations, which doesn’t always recognise its own theatres. While you spend 10 minutes shouting “Leicester Square” into your handset, the computer offers you venues across the land. Result: fume and fury.

If you’ve ever loaded your own computer with the voice-recognition software that is on the market for consumers, you’ll know why. Even after you have trained programs such as ViaVoice and Naturally Speaking to tune into your best Kirsty Young voice, the text they generate is littered with mistakes. So what is the chance of an untrained computer at the other end of a phone line decoding your dictation, especially when you adopt your most amusing Huw Edwards accent?

Speech recognition is improving, it’s true, but the likelihood of mistakes and the need for double-checking have led to the kind of interrogation at which Vodafone’s friendly female robot — let’s call her Susan — excels. You phone to top up your mobile, and Susan has been told to ask whether every utterance you make is correct. Yelling “No, frigging no” at a disembodied robot is humiliating at the best of times, and doubly so under the gaze of commuters on the platform at Milton Keynes station.

The system’s sheer lack of nuance raises blood pressure to an alarming level and makes you long for a “You’respeakingtoKellyhowmayIhelpyou” human. That would involve paying staff, of course, but can they really be more expensive than robots?

No matter who you call for customer service, you are likely to foot the bill. The internet service provider Wanadoo charges 50p per minute for technical support, Supanet a whopping £1 per minute. Even the local-rate number 0870 — preferred by Dell, Apple and many others — costs up to 8p per minute. Sounds trifling, but if you are left on hold for half an hour, that’s £2.40 in somebody else’s pocket before you’ve spoken to a soul.

It’s preposterous to suggest that these automated services are designed to rack up call charges. If you are in any doubt, you should immediately check the website www.saynoto0870.com, which helpfully list ways to avoid “lo-call” phone numbers, which earn revenue for the company you’re calling. There are also handy tips to lure a human operator on the line as quickly as possible.

Technology is supposed to save money, and for business fat cats, that’s certainly true. Automated services allow bean-counters to move both the cost and effort of serving customers onto the customers themselves. Cost to you and me: time and stress. Brilliant.

Companies with these silicon-based functionaries assume that your time and health are worth less than their revenue. I say: find another company, one that’s willing to pay real people to provide real customer service, at least until George leaves college and finds a job running a call centre. When I asked him why my computer wasn’t working, his answer was a refreshingly honest “I dunno”.

Explore Tech & Web

• Personal Tech

• The Web

• Gadgets & Gaming