Beware of the Shoggoths

A couple of weeks ago, I saw this article: Mark Zuckerberg…plans to put tracking software on [his] employees’ computers to track their mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes…it will also randomly capture images of its workers’ screens every now and then. All of this is meant to help train [chatbot]s to better mimic what human beings do when they work on computers, including tricky stuff like using drop-down menus…[in order] to help eventually replace those humans with [program]s, which don’t require paychecks or health insurance or common courtesy…by May 20…[Facebook plans to eliminate] about 8,000 [jobs]…about 10% of its total workforce…and that will just be the first round of job cuts. The second, of what could be a similar size, will come later in the year… Given that chatbots are merely word-guessing algorithms which, when they aren’t performing substandard imitations of human behavior, are generally making mistakes or spouting complete nonsense, a world run by such software would…