The views expressed on this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization that I have worked with.
Legal Dispute: Department of Labor – Man vs. his ‘Thought Model’ :
This is a pure work of fiction from my imagination – at least for today. You never know when fiction turns into a reality.
Department of Labor has an unique case today. A man sues his former employer for using his services. What’s wrong with that? – you ask. Any other day I would have said – Well.. that’s how employment works. One works, one gets paid. But this is no normal lawsuit.. the man does not work for them anymore. What?? How do they use his services in that case?? They have captured all his decisions and the parameters or conditions based on which he made those decisions at that time. They have profiled his varied personas and created models of his decision making. They have captured his learning curve and have added that to his ‘decision making model by persona’. Now all they do is subject the model to the current circumstances and understand what decision he would have made. And oh yes, his social presence and the type of professional groups he joins helps in training the model.
The employer when contacted, agreed that they used his data. “But what’s wrong with that?”, they ask “We are using data that was generated during his employment, and his publicly available data”. As for issues on ethics, if there is no harm in documenting the experience of all employees while they are employed, what’s wrong with using that documented experience in making future decisions? OK, in that case, should the ex employee be paid? The employer argued that his services were not being used actively. The employee argued that not only was his thinking being recreated in their labs for usage, but also the competitors were unwilling to give him a job as his thinking was being used by the ex employer. He demanded ‘royalty fees’ for using his ‘thought process model’.
Complicated enough? There’s more! This company is now defying death. They provide an app in your ‘wearable’ wrist band which records what you see, hear, speak and the decisions you make. It creates a model in your smartphone. It is capturing learnings about you all the time. It then applies the model to predict your next decision/ move. Further, it figures out if the prediction was correct, thus sharpening its learning all along. What’s more – this app now knows how you will behave under different situations and people too. And did I mention – it can send waves to your brain to give you your desired dreams !!
Wait there’s more – Based on it’s knowledge about you (now of course it knows more about you than you know yourself), you can ask it to manipulate your thought process. If you realize you may be in an emotional bind, It can help you think clearly by feeding your mind positive memories waves. No more anxiety attacks. How’s that for a wellness plan? Until the hacker community cracks the code on how to modify these thought guiding waves!!!
So why did we earlier say that the company is defying death? They will use this app and it’s knowledge about you to recreate YOU, a reincarnation if you will- inside a fully functional human size robot, if you can afford one – or just try the free tablet ‘Choose your avatar face’ version. This avatar will talk, act, learn, think and communicate exactly as you. But all this after you have departed onto heavenly abode. Remember Rene Descartes: ‘I think, therefore I am’? After your demise, the avatar thinks – so it is. As for you and me after death, not so sure!
Rejoice! You will always be around for the coming generations. They can mercy kill you indeed. I mean – Turn off the avatar/ robot switch. But, haven’t we all heard – nothing dies on the internet? So brace yourself, you could be immortalized inside a tablet or a robot. I wonder, will my spirit agree with my avatar? How will I, the spirit be the conscience to my avatar if it does not predict me correctly? Seems like a Spirit Box may need to be an additional input to this avatar’s prediction model.
Wait a minute, looks like we have digressed. Whatever happened to the ex employee’s complaint? Perhaps partially resolved. For now, the ex-employer changed the name of his avatar. That implies the avatar is no longer the ex-employee. It is now an avatar of an employee who is like the ex- employee, but not him. So no ‘royalty fee’ should be expected, right? Case closed? ?
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