Unix Guru : Robots want to know if we are human

It was a fine morning in Silicon Valley. There was a chill in the air. I walked briskly to meet up with Old Nick the Unix Guru for our morning cup of coffee.

Nick was already in the cafe. From the way he was looking at me, I figured that something was bothering him. 

"Have you noticed something new the last few years?" he asked, just as I sat down. Nick had already got my usual cup of coffee for me. Thanks, Nick!

"Lot of things are new the last few years, Nick," I said. "We have nearly survived a dictatorship, Apple released more iThingies, I can talk to Alexa when I am lonely ..."

"All those are true," Nick interrupted, "but you know what is the singularly most disturbing thing to have happened in the last decade or more?"

"What?" I looked questioningly at Nick.

"The robots want us to prove that we are human!" Nick said with all the gloom and doom in his voice.

"Are you talking about captcha?" I thought I guessed where he was going.

"Yes, captcha. The 'Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart'. It occurred to me last night during my frequent nightmares that the robots are already taking over. Why is it that we humans have to prove that we are indeed humans to some robotic intelligence? The taking over bit had been happening slowly, so slowly that I hadn't really thought of how sinister the concept of captcha is ... until last night!"

"Now that I think about it," I said, "it is indeed true. Our robotic masters have taken over. Do you think that this Artificial Intelligence thingie is actually invented by robots to completely subjugate us?"

"Absolutely," said Nick, "no doubts about it! Very soon AI will run the world, and we will be kept alive to power it and feed it data. Matrix, anyone?"

"So there is no hope for mankind?" I asked, hoping against hope that the omniscient Nick may have a happy answer.

"Nope! Null! Nada!" said Nick. "I knew it the moment I was born."