AI Is Here But... Are We Already The Robots?
Every few years humanity selects a new object of dread. We have worried about plagues, meteors, communism, capitalism, nuclear annihilation, sugar, gluten and now artificial intelligence. The robots are coming, we’re told. The machines are learning. The algorithms are watching. Somewhere, apparently, a polite stainless-steel overlord is clearing its digital throat and preparing to reorganize civilization. But here is the uncomfortable possibility. The robots are not rising. They are simply observing. And the reason they can observe us so efficiently is because we have made ourselves spectacularly easy to predict. Listen carefully to your house for a moment. It beeps. It pings. It hums. The washing machine emits a chirp and you respond like a trained retriever. The microwave declares completion and you leap to attention. The car chimes because you drifted over a white line and you murmur an apology to the dashboard as though it has feelings. We like to imagine we are mast...