Skynet is already here and it's not on our side

Why Nothing Works Anymore - Technology has its own purposes.

“No… it’s a magic potty,” my daughter used to lament, age 3 or so, before refusing to use a public restroom stall with an automatic-flush toilet. As a small person, she was accustomed to the infrared sensor detecting erratic motion at the top of her head and violently flushing beneath her. Better, in her mind, just to delay relief than to subject herself to the magic potty’s dark dealings. 

It’s hardly just a problem for small people. What adult hasn’t suffered the pneumatic public toilet’s whirlwind underneath them? Or again when attempting to exit the stall? So many ordinary objects and experiences have become technologized—made dependent on computers, sensors, and other apparatuses meant to improve them—that they have also ceased to work in their usual manner. It’s common to think of such defects as matters of bad design. That’s true, in part. But technology is also more precarious than it once was. Unstable, and unpredictable. At least from the perspective of human users. From the vantage point of technology, if it can be said to have a vantage point, it's evolving separately from human use.

Boldface added. And now, Customer Service Chatbots Are About to Become Frighteningly Realistic

I refer you back to my post about robot priests offering blessings to people. Quite apart from the theological questions it raises, the first model is very primitive and looks like something out of a Robbie and the Robot series or a bad 1950s space opera. But,

What will BlessU2 be like in 30 years when it is fully integrated with Artificial Intelligence and you can actually have an intelligent conversation with it that would seem indistinguishable from one with a real person? And ponder about a robot consecrating and serving Holy Communion.

I am not saying it will happen, but, well, consider this:  Neuroscience will give us what we’ve sought for decades: computers that think like we do.

I am reminded of what Winston Churchill said in 1938,

Science bestowed immense new powers on man, and, at the same time, created conditions which were largely beyond his comprehension.

He also said later, "Scientists should be on tap, not on top." True that.