The New Species of Intelligent Robots—Human Beings and the Conspiracy to Program Behavior

By William Davidow

Author—The Autonomous Revolution—Reclaiming the Future We’ve Sold to Machines

The most pressing threat to humanity in the years to come will come not from autonomous machines but from programmed people. 

Though not recognized as such, extremely unreliable and flawed forms of these programmed devices, in the guise of human beings, have been around for thousands of years. Legions of soldiers marching unquestioningly to their deaths, religious cultists accepting articles of faith without doubt, individuals at the mercy of delusions and hallucinations . . . all, in retrospect, can be characterized at their most extreme moments, as behaving like what we now characterize as ‘robotic’.

What is compelling, and deeply disturbing about this moment in history, is how efficient, pervasive, and sweeping this programming has become. Worse, it is now not only the province of tyrannies, mental illness and charismatics, but the most common institutions in modern life: corporations, policy makers, academia, autocrats – all, in various ways, are using the latest technologies to render ever-larger portions of the populous into autonomous ‘devices’ programmed to produce desired outcomes.

Worse, in recent years, these institutional ‘controllers’ (we intentionally are using terms from the high-tech world) have dramatically improved their control processes, perfected their feedback loops, advanced their sensing mechanisms – all to provide them with more information about our bodies, emotions, and brains, and expanded the range of behaviors under their control. The result is that, soon, much of humanity will spend the vast percentage of its time serving as robots.

This is perhaps the greatest existential crisis humanity has ever faced. Almost no one has it on their radar screen.

The first generation of well-designed human robots was created by the gaming industry. Those robots performed reliably in well-designed controlled casino environments. The robots, gambling addicts, were programmed to go to casinos, pull levers on slot machines, and reach into their wallets, and hand over money to casino cashiers. The second generation of passively created robots was emerged when computers and smart devices made control environments available anytime and anywhere. All of us have seen these robots weaving down the freeway as they read and texted. The third generation was empowered by big data and AI that enabled controllers to learn more about the controlee, expanded the control mechanisms available, and improved the feedback processes. The most common form of these robots spent hours engaged on Facebook or playing games like Grand Theft Auto. The fourth generation will be powered by the Internet of Things that will provide an ever-wider array of information and control tools.  Facial recognition will enable controllers to better determine user emotions and better leverage emotional controls.

What Is A Robot?

Mechanical automata, the first crude robots, have been with us for centuries. Eleventh century clocks used weights and water to power mannequins to ring gongs and play music at designated times.[1],[2] Probably the first automaton to exhibit some form of autonomous behavior was "El Ajedrecista" (The Chess Player), the invention of Leonardo Torres Quevedo. The machine made its public debut in Paris in 1914 and played simple king rook chess end games. The machine caught opponents attempting to cheat and took pride in announcing its victories.[3]

In 1921, the word robot entered the English language. Czech writer's, Karel Capek, play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) introduced the world to roboti, synthetic organic matter creatures that first slaved away in Rossum's factories but then rebelled, stormed the factory, and killed all but one of its human inhabitants.[4] Since that time, science fiction has been filled with stories about the revenge of the robots.

It would indeed be ironic if the organic matter robots that stormed factories and governments in the future were human robots. 

Until the 1960's most robots were dumb. They lacked both intelligence and the ability to sense the environment. For the most part, they worked in tightly controlled environments where they performed tasks with 100% reliability like picking up a part that was properly oriented from a precise location and installing it at another location--labor saving but not very smart.

Today, the robots of the past that marveled guests at 18th Century Japanese tea parties and took factory worker's jobs in 20th Century automobile plants are boring and few of us would even consider them to be robots.[5] In a recent article in Wired, the author argued that "If a machine is truly autonomous, there's a good chance it's a robot."[6] So in order to be a modern robot, the device will have to be able to sense its environment and then based on its observations reliably engage in purposeful activity to achieve a goal.

The Level 5 Autonomous Automobile is an excellent example of the robot of the near future. It will drive from one place to another in a 100% reliable fashion. In order to do that it will have to know where it is at all times using GPS. It requires a collection of sensors that inform it about its local environment. It will have to be able to read warning signs. It will sense potentially dangerous conditions and predict the behavior of other objects--automobiles and children--in its presence and take action to avoid accidents and do any harm. It will have to, at all times, be in control of the vehicle. When driverless Uber’s become commonplace, robots will increasingly make their own decisions about who to pick up in order to maximize the profits they will earn for their controllers. They will operate as autonomous business owners. Think of the robot as a small business owner.

Of course, human robots will differ in important ways from their autonomous cousins. They will be significantly less reliable and dependable. But the goal of the controllers will be to improve their dependability over time. 

At least for the present, human robots will be part time. They will not spend 100% of their time in robot mode. For example, they might only be performing in robot mode while at work, playing an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), or shopping. They will be statistical as well. Controllers will be able to predict that a certain percent of a group will be in robot mode, but they will not know which specific individuals will be acting as a robot. For example, controllers will be able to predict that a certain number of shopping robots will shop at Whole Foods but will not be able to identify each specific individual. 

Of course, human robots have been with us for thousands of years. Militaries have been creating these types of robots for a long time. Authoritarian regimes, as well, have relied on human robots to secure their control. Fredrick Taylor with his stopwatch taught the world how to create human manufacturing robots.

There are important differences between the human robots of the past and those of the future. The first and perhaps the most important is that we have created tools that significantly reduce the cost of generating robotic behavior. This means that large profits can be made by creating human robots. 

It took a lot of money to train a marine or a fighter pilot—warrior robots. Training a Facebook or an MMORPG robot costs almost nothing, and they become an instant source of profit. With low-cost robot creation productivity tools, it makes political, social, and commercial sense to create billions of them.

The second is the issue about environments. In the past, robots had to be in specific environments. They had to be members of the military, on the assembly line in a factory, or inside a gambling casino. If robots had to be in tightly controlled physical environments, it would be impossible to create billions of them to serve the needs of business, institutions, insurrectionists, and governments.

The third difference is the tools and their quality. We have more and better techniques for learning what is going on in the potential human robot’s mind and have more tools that can be used to induce robotic behavior.

In summary, new technologies make it practical to create human robots at unimaginable scale.

The Freedom Everyone Treasures is Illusory

So, let’s take a closer look at the four stages of human robotic progression. We are going to spend a considerable amount of time examining Stage 1. The improved robotic techniques and the expanded domain of robotic control evidenced in Stages 2, 3, and 4 are for the most part technological extensions and refinements of those early developments. 

Stage 1 Intelligent Human Robots--Modern human robotic technology has its roots in the 1930’s with B. F. Skinner, the controversial Harvard psychologist. Skinner, often accused of being a fascist, founded the field of radical behaviorism. 

Put simply, Skinner held that the “freedom” everyone treasures is illusory —that everyone is really controlled by subtle and complex rewards and punishments handed out by the culture and environment — and that the skills of behavioral science should be harnessed to a “technology of behavior” to improve the human lot.[7]

Gambling casinos were the first to create large profitable businesses based on Skinner’s techniques.

If Skinner were to observe deeply addicted gamblers pulling the arms on slots of today, he would instantly identify their rat like behavior. He would undoubtedly conclude that casinos had created a giant Skinner Box in which casino clients continually pulled levers and pushed buttons in search of rewards--—just as his pigeons pecked at red lit buttons in his Skinner Boxes to earn kernels of grain. 

Skinner held that an animal’s behavior was heavily influenced by experience and conditioning, and that all creatures – human and otherwise – were inclined to do what the world rewards them for doing. To test his theories Skinner invented the “operant conditioning” chamber, or Skinner Box. When Skinner’s pigeons were presented with a cue – a button that lit up in a certain color – they pecked at the button, an activity that opened a drawer filled with grain, the reward. The resulting cycle of cue, activity, and reward became a key element for Skinner in “operant-conditioning” his subjects: through the use of punishment and reward, he found he could change their behavior.

Thanks to advances in neuroscience, we now better understand the neurochemistry driving operant conditioning.  We now know that the unconscious comes pre-primed for pleasure. All pleasure is accompanied by the signature release of the chemical dopamine, a neurotransmitter. Thanks in large part to research done into drug and gambling addiction, we have a much better understanding of the relationship between pleasure and dopamine release than we used to. We know now that the brain perceives all pleasures in a similar way, whether those pleasures originate with a cash reward, a line of cocaine, the victory bells of a slot machine, the leveling up in a video game, a thumbs-up on Facebook, or the stock alert that notifies you that shares in your favorite company just went through the roof.

The casinos worked hard to make the environments more addictive. They quickly discovered that large unpredictable variable rewards were key to getting gamblers hooked. That is why we have big jackpots. Luke Clark, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, used brain scans to determine that when gamblers felt they could exert control over a game's outcome -- for example, by throwing the dice harder, or pulling the lever on a slot machine with more force -- their interest in playing increased.

In summary, Stage 1 Intelligent Human Robot technology consisted of putting people in controlled environments and using well designed dopamine rewards to get them to engage in robotic behavior. The technology did not achieve widespread application because it was difficult to get millions of people into controlled environments.

Stage 2 Intelligent Human Robots--Stage 2 was a time of broad based passive human robot creation. The year 1998 was roughly the starting point. The RIM 950 Wireless Handheld with a keyboard that enabled users to send and receive email and evolved into the Blackberry was introduced that year. In 2000 the Internet hit 400 million users. Three years later, the first smart phones appeared.[8] In 2009, Facebook introduced the Like Button.[9] 2010 is probably a good time to call an end to the passive robot creation era.

The first time most of us became conscious of large numbers of people with addictive and obsessive compulsive like behavior was when we observed Blackberry users who could not put their devices down and were constantly checking for email. The flood gates really opened in 2007 when the iPhone hit the market.[10]By 2010, 70 million iPhones had been sold.[11]

People looking for good news in an email or a notification that their favorite stock had hit a new high were getting unpredictable variable rewards that drove dopamine hits. 

The human robots instead of having to go to the gambling casino to be in the controlled environment were now carrying the environment in their pockets. They were living in virtual Skinner Boxes. 

The inventors of email and online news services were providing the dopamine triggering rewards. One can safely assume they were not thinking about creating addicting environments when they invented email. So, thinking of Stage 2 at a time when robot creation was passive seems appropriate. It just happened.

Another important contributor to the passive creation of robots were hyperlinks. Internet users would do a search on Google and suddenly find themselves in in robot mode as they clicked on a series of hyperlinks finding pleasant surprises as they moved along enjoying dopamine hits. A common complaint among users was that time just melted away and important things did not get done.

The Addictive World of Gaming

Computer games became one of the most powerful vehicles for passive robot creation. The real breakthrough occurred in 2004 with the introduction of Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. Warcrack’s, as some people referred to it, ability to generate committed robots is perhaps best illustrated by claims by its devotees like OneUpPhoenix. He claimed in 2012 that he had played the game for 19,032 hours or the equivalent of working for 40 hours per week for almost ten years.[12]

When I visited Blizzard Entertainment, there were 160 people working on World of Warcraft and not one was a psychologist. No one I spoke to had heard about operant conditioning. 

Psychologists weren’t necessary. That was because those who created Blizzard’s games were lifelong gamers. They were attempting to create a gaming experience that was like one they would enjoy. 

In the process, they did everything right. It was as if they had studied the Harrah’s casino’s game plan. 

“Game designers resemble psychologists in a lot of ways,” said Tom Chilton, game director for World of Warcraft. “Because what we trained ourselves to do was put ourselves in the shoes of the game player. In a lot of ways that’s one of the primary talents of the game designer – trying to create the game experience in a way that you’re evoking the psychology you want in the person playing the game and getting them to feel what you want them to feel.”

Blizzard engineers engaged in A/B testing. They would present players with two different versions of various game situations to determine which one was most appealing. In doing so, they were searching for the large variable rewards that triggered dopamine releases. These engineers were not psychologists but were doing just the type of thing a game psychologist would advise them to do to create an addictive game.   

Blizzard in particular, perfected a reward technique known as dynamic difficulty adjustment, in which they created ever-more satisfying challenges tailored to the individual, with the anticipation of a reward provided at just the right time to keep the player engaged.  And at carefully scheduled intervals there appeared a flash of light, religious in its overtones, to signify a “leveling up,” which was a bestowal of higher, more powerful status upon the player. They perfected the large unpredictable variable rewards that triggered dopamine releases. But then they did the casino’s one better. They figured out how to increase their control using tribal instincts.

The designers created “guilds.” Once a solo player reached his full potential, he could join a guild, which could have as many as forty players. This meant he was no longer working alone but for the collective good of a tribe. Others depended on him to show up.

The guilds introduced social controls as a way to make sure the human robots kept showing up for work.

MMORPG’s were limited in their reach by environmental restrictions. The hardware requirements limited their use to the home. Zynga, founded in 2007, transcended those limits when it introduced games like Farmville. Its president, Marcus Pincus talked about engaging his customers in compulsion loops that makes one suspect that Zynga was moving beyond the world of passive robot creation. 

Facebook, founded in 2004, and other social networks opened the flood gates for passive robot creation. Whereas World of Warcraft never captured more than about 10 million users, Facebook had 100 million in 2008 and over half a billion in 2010.[13] The real breakthrough occurred in early 2009 when the company added the like button. Now Facebook users could get their dopamine rewards by keeping track of the thumbs up icon counts that appeared on their posts. Facebook was increasing their revenue by capturing user attention. Passively created human robots that engaged in autonomous actions with the goal of increasing the numbers of thumbs up were great for business. 

YouTube was founded in 2005. It did a great job at passive robot creation as well. By 2010, the company was serving two billion video’s a day as user consumed one clip after another. The company with its intriguing product had done the impossible serving almost twice the number of daily views of the three major television networks combined.[14]

By 2010, things were well positioned for the entry into Stage 3. The social networks were there, the portable environments were proliferating, and the techniques used in the design of MMORPG games were spreading across the Internet, manifesting themselves in social networking applications like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. 

The Internet Slot Machine

Stage 3 Intelligent Human Robots—In Stage 3, the powerful companies, institutions, and governments that controlled the internet moved from passively creating robots to actively creating them. Human robots no longer happened by mistake. Big data and AI were enabling companies to look into peoples’ minds, habits, and better understand their interests, fears, pleasures, and other emotions. Tools like newsfeeds appeared on the scene automating processes that made creating identity groups easier. This meant that social pressures could be added to the control mechanisms available to robots’ creators.

One of Stage 3 most powerful tools were recommendation systems. The initial goal of these systems was to filter, prioritize, and deliver relevant information to alleviate the problem of information overload.[15] They have evolved into one of the most important and effective tools for creating human robots. They tailored the news appearing on newsfeeds to the readers interests. Just when you had finished watching a great video on YouTube, they were in your face presenting you with a number of fascinating alternatives. They kept the user pulling the lever on the internet slot machine in search of information jackpots.

Smartphone shipments took off. In 2011 almost 500 million were shipped.[16] In 2019, there were 3.2 billion smartphone users worldwide.[17] This meant that almost half the world’s population was carrying a virtual Skinner box in their pockets and that peoples’ activities could be tracked in physical space providing the controllers of virtual spaces with more powerful tools for robot creation. Stage 3 saw the rise of marketing techniques that better leveraged addiction and took advantage of an individual’s fears, anxiety, compulsions, and narcissistic behaviors. Creating behaviors associated with mild forms of personality disorders was good for business.

Another important factor in creating robots were the expanded services available on the internet. As a result, American’s were spending more and more of their time in virtual space. In 2000, the average person was spending 9.4 hours per week and that number grew to 23.6 hours in 2016 according to a study at USC.[18] Another study put the number closer to 6 hours per day or 30 hours during the workweek.[19]

Now consider the fact that the average American spends a little over 13 hours per day on activities that must be confined to the physical world like sleeping, eating, physical work around the house like washing dishes, taking care of children and elders and 11 hours a per day working, in leisure activities such as socializing, being entertained, and exercise, all activities that can move or be impacted by virtual space.[20] What is remarkable is that over 50% of the average American’s not physically related activities have already been committed to virtual space.  It is easy to envision that number climbing to over 75% in the years to come as existing applications are improved, virtual headsets create ever more realistic experiences, work out routines connect to virtual environments, and our bodies become adorned with Internet of Things devices.

The IoT is also finding ways to penetrate the 13 hours a day we spend on physical activities. Fitbit will provide a detailed graph of your sleep stages, Beautyrest uses a sleep tracker that sits under your mattress and helps you interpret sleep data, and then there are a series of devices that can be used to facilitate childcare such as baby monitors.

Once we are encased in virtual space, free will yields to robotic behavior. The time when the average American will spend over eight hours per day in robot mode is fast approaching. 

By using big data and AI, internet companies could learn about what you liked, disliked, and feared and use the information to power recommendation systems. With GPS they could learn where you were and what appealing services were near you. They could find out what you wanted to buy and when you were thinking about purchasing it. They would know if you were short on credit so they could make you an attractive offer. In short, they could tailor the virtual experience to you.  

The big advance was that in the past, user experience was tailored to demographic groups but now user experience can be matched to the individual. Companies had less need to perform A/B tests on users since analytics enabled them to determine what they wanted. Whereas cigarette companies used nicotine to provide smokers with the dopamine they craved, internet companies were using fascinating information and thumbs up recognition to create the releases. All of this had tremendous appeal to users. It is great fun to be a human robot when you succeed in satisfying your needs. 

Narcissism, FOMO & Identity

In Stage 3, companies acquired other new tools for creating robot type behavior. They moved beyond addiction. They became experts at creating fears, compulsions, anxieties, and narcissistic behaviors.

At the risk of being cynical, the new tools facilitate companies engaging in what could be called personality disorder marketing.

Narcissism is good for internet businesses and capturing and holding user attention. Social networks are the ideal productivity tools for narcissists—Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

We are living in the midst of a narcissism epidemic. That is a conclusion reached in a study performed Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell on 37,000 college students. The study showed that among that group narcissistic personality traits rose just as fast as obesity from the 1980’s to the present.[21] 

Researchers at Western Illinois University measured two socially disruptive aspects of narcissistic personalities-- grandiose exhibitionism and entitlement/exploitativeness. Those who had high scores on grandiose exhibitionism tended to amass more friends on Facebook.[22] Buffardi and Campbell found a high correlation between Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) scores and Facebook activity. Researchers were able to identify those with high NPI scores by studying their Facebook pages. 

There are undoubtedly many factors other than the internet that have played a role in the narcissism epidemic, but the key point is that internet companies have now added a new tool to their arsenal that can be used to create human robotic behavior.

FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out, is another. A new term has entered the American marketing lexicon, FOMO spending. Where in the past people had a tendency to spend to keep up with the Joneses, the beauty of the internet is that it runs 24/7 not just when you spot a new car in the driveway next door. A recent survey found that 57% of millennials spent more than they planned as a result of being exposed to social media.[23]

The popular internet site, Instagram, encapsulates personality disorder marketing best of all. With one billion active users, it is riding high.[24] All of the beautiful people post there and if you are not perfect there are numerous photo editing tools the less beautiful can use to turn themselves into viable competitors.[25] A study by the Royal Society for Public Health rated Instagram the worst social app for causing depression in young people.[26] So in a way, Instagram has everything and nothing going for it. So why is it so good at creating robots?

Instagram offers pleasant surprises and “likes” so it appeals to pleasure seekers in search of dopamine hits. Users go there to make sure they know what is going on so they can attend important events and purchase trendy items. So, FOMO is one of the tools in its tool kit. It is a great place for narcissists to strut their stuff. So, users come for the fun. 

Unfortunately, they find themselves competing with the perfect or the patched up perfect and end up with feelings of anxiety, insecurity, and depression. 

In Phase 3, the rise of the internet, the growing use of social media, newsfeeds that fed us information from narrowly focused sources, and recommendation systems that made sure we were fed information that matched our interests, made it easier to find and join social identity groups that matched our beliefs, convictions, and interests. 

According to social identity theory, we create categories like black, white, Christian, or student and assign characteristics and behavioral norms to their members. When we identify/join one of these groups, we adopt behaviors that conform to group norms. We enjoy the feelings of belonging and if membership is going to enhance our self-esteem, then our group must compare favorably with others.[27] That competition frequently creates in-groups and out-groups, prejudice, and polarization. 

Virtual identity groups on the internet are a powerful tool for creating human robots. Individuals hang out in them to view material they agree with. They increase their self-esteem and get dopamine hits as well. Once human robots associate with identity groups, they frequently take actions in both virtual and physical space to support the group. They might post ideas conforming to group norms. They frequently encourage their friends to join the group. In some cases, they take action in the physical world. Elias Aboujaoude in his book Virtually You observes, “the traits we take on online can become incorporated in our offline personalities.”

Identity groups are another tool for creating human robots and controlling their behavior.    

In summary, big data and AI tools enabled companies to structure more appealing dopamine release products. Companies also developed new psychological tools they could employ to create robots. The analytic tools enabled them to figure out if what they were doing was working. Recommendation systems amplified the power of the new tools. Identity groups proliferated and as human’s conformed to the group norms required for membership, more robots were created. All of this was going on while virtual space was expanding. This meant humans were spending more time in environments where companies, organizations, and governments could exert control. 

Becoming Cyborgs

In Stage 3, the amount of time humans spent as robots increased dramatically. We are now entering Stage 4 where the IoT, Internet of Things, will provide new tools for creating robots, new control mechanisms, and more precise feedback loops. Other tools will become more powerful as well. Data analytics will improve, and AI powered by deep learning will enable those who control virtual space to more efficiently create robotic behavior and direct the activities of robots.

Stage 4 Intelligent Human Robots—The two most important technologies involved in creating Stage 4 are IoT and deep learning. The number of IoT devices installed worldwide, by one estimate, will increase from around 11 billion in 2018 to 125 billion in 2030 or about 14 devices for every person on the planet.[28]

Many IoT devices will be used to make industry, commerce, and infrastructure function more effectively. The devices will be used to track shipments so shippers and customers can know the precise location of the products en route. They will be used by power utilities to manage their systems. Industry and government will employ them to improve security and manage transportation and traffic. 

The IoT applications that have the greatest impact on human robot creation fall into the areas of personal use, connected and smart home devices, connected cars, smart cities, and government applications involving safety, security, and the reinforcement of autocratic power. 

As personal use applications of IoT devices proliferate, most of humanity will meet the definition of a cyborg—“An organism, often a human, that has certain physiological processes enhanced or controlled by mechanical or electronic devices, especially when they are integrated with the nervous system.”[29],[30]

Now when most people think about cyborgs, they envision devices that are physically connected to their bodies. This need not be the case. When an external device causes changes in our brain chemistry, it is connecting with our nervous system. When FOMO kicks in the release of neurotransmitters associated with anxiety disorders---aminobutyric acid, serotonin, and norepinephrine—are probably affected. 

Personal use IoT devices are already programming numerous peoples’ behavior. Fitbits are producing large numbers of 10,000 step per day robots. The Kolibree smart toothbrush connects to your smart phone and makes tooth brushing an enjoyable family experience while improving the way kids brush their teeth. The child is being turned into a cyborg by a tooth brush that is enhancing “physiological processes ….controlled by mechanical or electronic devices.”

Cheap cameras will be everywhere. They will be making cities safer. They will also enable governments and companies to track peoples’ physical location down to the inch. They can also be used to make pretty accurate educated guesses about peoples’ emotions. Emotient can do just that. Using a simple digital camera, their software can analyze a human face to determine whether a person is feeling joy, sadness, surprise, anger, fear, disgust, or contempt.[31] Deep learning algorithms are being used to analyze peoples’ emotions in chatbot applications and by monitoring text communications.[32],[33]

Emotion analysis and detection give internet controllers a new set of feedback mechanisms that can be used in the design of tools to program human behavior. 

The key point is that there will be an endless list of IoT devices, Fitbits, Apple Watch’s, Alexa’s, cameras, consumer brain wave measuring devices, toothbrushes, Google Glasses, and many more all of which will enhance the ability of controllers to program our behavior. 

Our greatest concern should be focused on autocratic governments that will use IoT devices to enhance their control over their citizens. China is well on its way to creating an Orwellian state in which 1.4 billion intelligent human robots will engage in autonomous action to support the governments goals.

It is one thing to control the flow of information and monitor communication as China has done. It is another to create a Social Credit System as China is in the process of doing.[34] At the present time the system is rapidly evolving. At its heart is the concept that each citizen would be given a social credit score starting at 1000 and grades from A to D.[35] If you get a D, you are rated as untrustworthy and are in real trouble. You score determines educational opportunities, whether you can purchase certain goods or be barred from high-speed rail or in some cases whether you can purchase a train ticket at all.[36] The IoT will make the system more powerful.

Using cameras and facial recognition, the IoT is being employed to track the movement of Uighar Muslims in Xinjiang.[37] But think of how much more powerful the system will become when emotional tracking capability can be added. If you look up at a billboard with a picture of Xi Jinping and facial recognition software decides you have shown the emotion of contempt, you just might end up having your social credit score reduced by 100 points. 

Stage 4 will provide the controllers with new and better tools for programming our behavior. It will give autocratic regimes powerful tools for controlling the behavior of their citizens.

Humanities Existential Crisis—Human Robots

The near-term threat to humanity will not come from machines run amuck. We will not be threatened in our homes by LAWS—Lethal Automated Weapons Systems currently being researched by DARPA.[38] The dystopian diatribe, The Industrial Society and Its Future, written by

Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber better encapsulates what should be our real concern:[39]

“---but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite -- Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; --- If the elite is ruthless, they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity---Or, if the elite consist of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it---- that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem." --- These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.”

The most important creators and controllers of Stage 3 and 4 human robots are commercial enterprises whose goal is to do things that are good for their business, organizations and institutions creating robots to further their goals, and governments seeking to increase their power and implement their programs. 

Most of the members of this “tiny elite” group will seek to have better control over the masses. Commercial enterprises like Facebook will seek to create robots that are always connected in order to increase their advertising revenue. Amazon will obviously have a goal of increasing the number of AmazonShopBots. It will use many techniques to get the AmazonShopBots to spend more. Recommendations targeted at individuals’ needs and desires are ones that we have all experienced. But Amazon also has a presence on Instagram a site associated with FOMO Spending. 

Robots created through membership in affinity groups have the large potential for supporting both social and antisocial goals. Individuals facing social and emotional challenges can benefit greatly from being members. Many local and national social causes will benefit by building large virtual affinity groups especially when they are tightly connected to accessible physical organizations. But many affinity groups will have anti-social agendas. They will create robots that will be used to polarize society, reinforce ethnic, racial, and religious hate. They will be used as tools to support riots and ethnic cleansing efforts.  

The most worrisome elite groups will be autocratic governments. There is little doubt autocrats will use ethnic cleansing human robots to carry out genocides. Governments have used military robots to wage wars for millennia. The new tools will enable them to create civilian robots to support the cause. 

Robotic ethnic cleansing sounds eerily close to Kaczynski’s tiny ruthless elite deciding to “exterminate the mass of humanity.”

There is of course the other alternative that soft-hearted liberals in control of government and social institutions will decide to play the “role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race.” This is in fact an outcome that B. F. Skinner envisioned when he argued behavioral science should be harnessed to a “technology of behavior” to improve the human lot.

One suspects a society where lives are programmed by commercial interests and “good shepherds” would be plagued with red tape, pretty dysfunctional, purposeless, and meaningless. 

If we are going to live lives in a society overrun with robots, the soft-hearted liberal approach is a better alternative than a tiny ruthless elite. But, there is a third approach that is even better—free society from the grasp of robots. Control human robot creation so they will not spend all of their waking hours in robot mode. 

This will not be easy, but it is what we must do to avoid the existential crisis. 

The reason we face this crisis is that the tools of robot creation are extremely cheap, easy, and very effective. So, let’s make creating human robots expensive, difficult, and make the tools less effective.

From a free market perspective, we have dramatically underpriced the cost of robot creation. Robots have great value to their creators. They bring with them very large externalized costs. Think of the externalized costs of social polarization robots, election rigging robots, and the emotional illness creating robots that hang out on Instagram.

The controllers of the internet have violated the public trust. They have chosen business models that are basically immoral or amoral because it is good for business. 

In the early days, they promised to bring us together, but they have torn us apart. They have consciously created addictive like behavior just as the gambling casinos, cigarette companies, and drug dealers have done to build their extremely profitable businesses.

The Path to Human Downgrading

The good news is the frightful five Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft dominate the internet. If they were to adopt a code of ethics and abandon the techniques used to actively create robots, the problem would be corrected for such a large percent of the internet that no government action would be required. For example, they could give up the practice of using recommendation systems and targeting advertising and news feeds based on personal information. They would have to change their business model and start charging for their services.

Some people believe market forces will motivate them to change their behavior. Groups like the Center for Humane Technology and the Time Well Spent movement have that as their goal.[40] Both were co-founded by Tristan Harris who worked as a design ethicist at Google and coined the phrase “human downgrading.”[41]

Unfortunately, even though this is probably the best possible scenario, it is highly unlikely it will ever happen.

If governments decide to act, their goal should not be to eliminate human robots. That would be impossible. But governments should strive to reduce their number, effectiveness, and the time humans spend in robot mode.

We can do this by making time spent on the internet more expensive, reducing the power of recommendation systems, and by making it more expensive to communicate with large numbers of others. 

We could start by taxing internet sites based on the number of hours users are connected. We could also tax users based on the amount of time they spend connected to the internet. One of the strongest objections to doing this is that many earn their living on the internet. One way around this would be to make those taxes progressive based on the number of users the site has. So, the tax would be highest for time spent connected to sites like Facebook. 

We could explore ways to reduce the power of recommendation systems. One way to do this would be to give users the ownership of their data and prohibit sites from storing data about users other than things like credit card information for more than say 30 minutes. 

Tim Berners Lee is the driving force behind the Solid system that could be used to provide users with personal information vaults called pods that enable them to control the sharing of their personal information.[42],[43]

Another thing that could be done to reduce the power of these systems is to make spreading the word more expensive. Placing a tax on emails would make it more expensive to get the word out. 

All of these ideas are objectionable. But to do nothing is the most objectionable action of all. 

Society is confused about virtual worlds. It understands dangers and damages taking place in physical space. Breaking into one’s home to steal information in a person’s file cabinet is obviously bad but stealing the same information over the internet feels different. Breaking someone’s arm or bashing their face is obviously wrong but causing intangible mental illness over the internet feels different. Organizing a riot downtown that causes people to break windows and set fires is obviously wrong but what if you train 10,000 robots in a city that comes together and just does it? 

It is time to figure out how to reduce the amount of time four billion internet users will spend in robot mode. In the near future those users will be spending 4 trillion hours per year connected to the internet. If just one percent of that time is spent on antisocial activity that is the equivalent of about 20 million people working full time to create social problems. That is a very big army. Of course, that number could be one hundred times larger. After all, China will probably create a billion robots on its own.

The time to confront the human robot creators is now.  

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