I think this is a great illustration of your point about the unintended consequences of automation, for several reasons. First is just the impact that these computer-based tools can have on the “meatspace.” Second, there’s the larger issue of accountability. Robo-[insert job title] are just puppets on the strings of their human masters, but we forget this as the relationship is abstracted away into bit and bytes to be ingested by other bits and bytes and pieces of silicon (our systems). The algorithm that crashed Wall Street was later traced back to a human, for instance.

So it seems there’s another question on top of ethics, one of transparency and accountability. How do we ensure that the humans creating these automations are always still tied to, and partially responsible for, bots slithering through cyberspace?