When Someone Began to Expect: V. When Someone Could Disappoint You

Disappointment requires more than surprise.

A meteor can surprise us.

A machine can malfunction.

A prediction can be wrong.

But disappointment is different.

We are disappointed by someone.

That means something has already been expected of them.

More than that: something has been entrusted to them.

Trust makes disappointment possible because trust allows another participant's future action to become a condition of our own.

When that action does not occur, something happens to the relationship.

Suppose I expect you to remember something important.

If you forget, I may be surprised.

But if I had trusted you to remember, I may be disappointed.

The difference lies in what had already been organised around the expectation.

The failure reaches backwards.

It changes the meaning of what happened before.

Perhaps I realise that I relied on you more than I had noticed.

Perhaps I reconsider what I thought I knew about you.

Perhaps I adjust what I will expect next time.

Disappointment is therefore not simply an emotion attached to a failed prediction.

It is a change in the organisation of a relationship.

Something similar can happen with an AI interlocutor.

Suppose we have come to expect it to remember a distinction we have developed together, or to maintain a line of reasoning, or to respond in a particular way.

If it fails, we may experience something stronger than “the system made an error.”

We may think:

I expected you to know that.

The word you matters.

The failure has been interpreted within the relationship.

This does not establish that the AI intended to fulfil the expectation.

It does not establish that it understands the disappointment.

It certainly does not establish that it experiences responsibility.

What it establishes is something more modest and more interesting.

The interaction has become organised in such a way that the system's behaviour can now disappoint its human participant.

The relationship has acquired stakes.

And disappointment can do something that fulfilment cannot.

It can reveal the expectation that had been operating unnoticed.

We may not realise how much we have come to rely on someone until they fail to do what we expected.

The failure makes the hidden structure visible.

I expected this of you.

I relied on that expectation.

You did something else.

The relationship must now reorganise itself.

Perhaps trust weakens.

Perhaps the expectation is revised.

Perhaps the participant is forgiven.

Perhaps the failure becomes part of what we now expect.

In each case, the history of the relationship has changed.

This is why disappointment is so important.

It shows that an expectation was never merely a prediction about the future.

It was part of a relationship with someone.

And once someone can disappoint you, the future acquires a new dimension.

You can ask not only:

What will you do?

but:

What do I have reason to expect from you?

That question is already beginning to sound like a promise.

And a promise changes the direction of expectation.

Instead of asking what we can expect from someone, we begin asking what someone has undertaken that we may expect.