At the “ripe” old age of 67 I am inclined to let my mind wander (I appear to have achieved sufficient unconscious capability at driving) when driving back to Alice Springs down the seemingly endless, essentially traffic-less and curve-less roads of the NT.
Recently, I found at least part of myself drawn to the nature of work. Over my long career, across various industries, I have occupied numerous positions that didn’t even exist when I was at school. I began to imagine what might be in the futures of today’s school kids’.
Clearly, I reasoned, as machines become ‘sentient’ they may well need counselling to maintain whatever happiness they’ll need to continue to serve humanity . Moreover they may well need the attention of psychologists to ensure they are not developing Borderline Personality Disorders. Some may even require the ministrations of psychiatrists to ensure they don’t act on any ‘hallucinations’ they may suffer from – after all a psychotic machine would likely be capable of creating mayhem particularly given machine-to-machine communications in IoT, the (Internet of Things) whereby one malfunction could become a global phenomenon within milliseconds!
Of course the question remains: will a human be required to take on, or even be capable of, such a role, or will it be a ‘closed shop’.
Will the machines form a union?
Or should we? A Luddite-like militia perhaps?
OK. Perhaps I’m over-ripe?