This reminds me of the Focused people in Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky", slaves that were integrated into the computer system to provide function that surpassed the computer's built in intelligence.
I've not read that. Personally i felt we're one step closer to the "cookies" in Charlie Brooker's "White Christmas" episode of Black Mirror.
From the article :
“Our test participant was impressed with how much M could do, but was sometimes disappointed at how long it took,” UserTesting’s report reads. “He concluded that it would be very useful if he could set it to perform a non-urgent tasks for him while he worked on other things.”
That made me shudder. One person tutting at the poor performance of "it". It seems plausible that robot-powered tasks would complete rapidly, and humans power the slower processes.
So the participant didn't know it was human-powered. If anything, that makes things worse.
From the article :
“Our test participant was impressed with how much M could do, but was sometimes disappointed at how long it took,” UserTesting’s report reads. “He concluded that it would be very useful if he could set it to perform a non-urgent tasks for him while he worked on other things.”
That made me shudder. One person tutting at the poor performance of "it". It seems plausible that robot-powered tasks would complete rapidly, and humans power the slower processes.
So the participant didn't know it was human-powered. If anything, that makes things worse.