You might be a robot. This is not a joke: opinion

A SoftBank Group Corp. Pepper humanoid robot, center, stands in front of a Boston Dynamics Inc. Atlas humanoid robot, left, and Spot robot as they are displayed at the SoftBank Robot World 2017 in Tokyo, Japan, on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2017. SoftBank Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son has put money into robots, artificial intelligence, microchips and satellites, sketching a vision of the future where a trillion devices are connected to the internet and technology is integrated into humans. Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg

There’s a lot of loose talk about convergence between people and robots. As some see it, the rise of artificial intelligence will make humans obsolete – or at least force people to think more like machines. 

Whether this prophecy should be viewed as auspicious or menacing is the subject of much speculation and controversy. But there’s no denying that in significant ways, it’s already happening.