When Someone Began to Expect: III. When Someone Could Fulfil an Expectation

An expectation becomes interesting when it can be fulfilled.

We expect the sun to rise, but we do not normally say that the sun has fulfilled our expectation.

We expect someone to arrive, answer, remember, notice or keep a promise.

The difference is subtle but important.

An expectation directed towards someone leaves room for their response.

They can fulfil it.

They can fail to fulfil it.

They can surprise us by doing something else.

The future therefore becomes something the other participant can do.

This changes the relationship.

Suppose we have come to expect that someone will understand a particular distinction. Each time they do, the expectation becomes more firmly established.

The next time, we do not begin from nothing.

We assume a certain capacity.

We may rely on it.

We may even stop explaining.

Expectation has become part of the organisation of the interaction.

The same thing can happen with an AI interlocutor.

At first, an answer may simply be correct.

After repeated interactions, however, we may begin to expect the system to recognise a particular distinction, remember a line of argument, notice an ambiguity, or respond in a familiar way.

When it does so, something more than correctness has occurred.

It has fulfilled an expectation.

And fulfilment changes the history of the relationship.

The next interaction begins from what has now happened.

But this does not mean that the AI possesses the capacity in the same sense that a human does.

The important point is interpersonal.

Within the relationship, a response can come to count as the fulfilment of an expectation.

That is enough to change what the participants can meaningfully expect next.

Repeated fulfilment can therefore produce something like reliability.

Not certainty.

Not infallibility.

Reliability.

We begin to organise our own behaviour around the expectation that a particular response is likely.

And this introduces something new.

If I can rely on you to do something, then your possible action becomes part of the conditions under which I act.

I can leave something unsaid.

I can delegate something.

I can make a plan.

I can take a risk.

The other participant has acquired a place in the organisation of my future.

This is why fulfilment matters.

An expectation that is repeatedly fulfilled does not merely become more accurate.

It changes the relationship in which the expectation exists.

The participant becomes more predictable in one sense, but also more significant.

I now know something about what I can do because of what I expect you to do.

Perhaps this is the beginning of reliability:

not simply that someone behaves consistently,

but that their consistency becomes something another participant can organise around.

And once we begin organising our own future around what someone else is expected to do, another possibility appears.

We can begin to trust them.