We are living in a time that past sci-fi authors used to dream about. We have been slowly boiled, not realizing we are getting cooked. There is a war being fought for the top of the food chain and humans are not winning, we are quietly deserting and supporting the machines.

Reverse Turing Test

The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Reverse Turing test is where a human has to convince a machine that the human is in fact a human.

These straight up tell me they don't think I am human. "These" being machines. Humans designed machines to test for humanness. 

Captchcas

Each square is small, only 100x100 pixels. The Cars version uses extra blurred and pixelated images. Is a truck a car? Is a cross-walk light a traffic light?

Captchcas are only partly used by machines to detect human sentience. They are also used to train AI. Most of these revolve around driving and streets, they are training self driving cars and Google Maps/Street View. When completing these you are working for Google, you are just not getting paid for your work. When you get multiple in a row it isn't because you got it wrong, you are simply doing more work for them.

I think therefor I am. Not any more. Captchcas don't want you to be right. They want you to be like other humans. Looking at the street light example, tiny bits of the street light appear in some squares. Technically these should be clicked but if 9 out of 10 humans didn't click them then selecting them would be "wrong". By thinking too much you have failed to be human. I thought therefor I was. 

Thief!

This used to happen all the time at a big-box hardware store. I would buy something, use self checkout since there was a huge line at the only manned checkout, and the alarm would go off. It didn't seem to matter if I bought an expensive item or a couple small and cheap items.

The first time I stopped when the alarm blared. The second time I only stopped when an employee chased me down yelling "sir, sir wait!" After that I stopped stopping. 

The alarm is accusing me of theft, falsely. It is loudly blaring for the whole store to hear, thief! Then an employee chases you down and asks to see your receipt. The machine calls you a thief, the human servant chases you down so you can prove you are not a thief.

These stores could hire a human to stand near the door. They could hire a human to sit in the back watching a camera. Or be cheap and hire a team in a remote location to watch camera feeds. The stores chose the cheapeast route possible, a thoughtless machine.

I don't want to be a dick to retail employees but I no longer stop. If you want to accuse me of theft be prepared for my rape whistle app to malfunction. I might start yelling back at the employee "sir, sir don't rape me! Stranger Danger!" I am not accusing them of rape, the rape whistle app I designed malfunctioned, I merely obeyed the robot.

I know the employee is just doing their job. So is the machine guarding the door. Human obeys robot, robot is part of corporate machine, corporate machine's AI says this is the optimal solution.

The Now

Chatbots, automated phone menus, "self-help" tech support, Internet of Things... which of these serve for the benefit of people? Machines, and technology in general, should make the lives of of humans better. Technology should serve people. You have been served.