ABSTRACT
There is growing awareness on many points of our planet that we’re living through a second machine age revolution, fuelled by the deployment of “smart” robots to ever-widening spheres of daily life. A global petition by humans and recent moves by other humans at the UN against killer robots serve as reminders that power is a human term that is vital for understanding the unfinished robots revolution. Brazenly ignoring the limits of machine learning, there are humans now designing robots for the purpose of manipulating, controlling, or eliminating their fellow human beings. Gloomier humans forecast a dystopian future of capitalism-plus-robots that triggers a new wave of “technological unemployment”. The ancients frequently represented their deities through human forms and qualities, such that gods and goddesses rode horses and chariots, fell in love, married and had children, feasted on special foods, wielded weapons and fought furious battles.
