Hi Robot!

He may look harmless,

but he wants your job!
(Photo: Getty)

Mary Wakefield, writing for The Spectator, has published a warning, "I, robot. You, unemployed" (January 16, 2016), for she speaks of the Singularity:

One evening last autumn, four experts in the field of artificial intelligence arrived in Westminster with an urgent message for our government. There's a robot revolution on the way, they said, and unless we prepare for it we’re in trouble . . . . The four experts spoke in turn, each about a different point in the future, like biblical prophets warning of the End Times. The most farseeing prophet was theoretically the most alarming. He talked about "the singularity," the point at which a computer will be capable of recursive self-improvement; of designing and building machines cleverer than itself and far, far cleverer than us. He said this point might be only 45 years away.

I could only chortle. "Ha! Joke's on them. I'll be dead long before this so-called 'singularity'!" At this point, the print continuing the article faded away, leaving its ironic Cheshire smile behind. Uh-oh. Time for their last laugh. A message followed:

Subscribe now to read on . . .

To which was added a subliminal message that I clean up my act:

Well, I now really wanted to read this article since they'd gone to such lengths to hide it from me, so I clicked on the writer's name, then on the article's title, and read the entire article . . . or would have if I hadn't tried to visit twice so that I could share this article's online address with my readers! That generosity lost me my second chance, and I got the same clean-up-your-act message as before.

Eye Robot is watching you. Aye, Robot.