Dateline: December 18 2029
Dash it all! I’ve lost control of my delivery robot, someone must have hacked it. Now I’ll have to get on my bike and do the job myself.
It was great news when general purpose mobile robots became affordable and available to the general public. Gig workers like me suddenly became micro entrepreneurs. Instead of physically doing deliveries for DoorDash and Uber Eats, we could lease a small fleet of robots to do it for us.
They used to call us dashers; over 10-million globally who earned a living doing DoorDash and Deliveroo deliveries. And because we were “self-employed”, most of us operated on multiple platforms. Gig workers like us thought the robots would take our jobs, but they just freed us up to become operators of very small businesses.
Like any business, you have challenges: capital, for example. Robot companies such as Tesla helped by offering leasing options instead of outright purchase. At least dasher bots can’t ask for higher wages or more charging breaks, so we don’t have HR issues.
But now we’re facing a new business threat. Our bots are being infiltrated and taken over by cybercriminals. Instead of mugging people doing deliveries, they just hack the bot’s operating system and redirect them. If you do get your robot back, the goods are long gone.
That’s the problem with general-purpose bots. They’re designed to be harmless and interact with people, so it’s easy to con them into being compliant, which makes security difficult.
If I want to be a gigepreneur I’ll have to tough it out and come up with some creative solutions. It sure beats being the worker! / First published on Mindbullets December 18 2025.
The nanny robot stole my baby
Dateline: October 6 2028
When Sara and Alan Johnson arrived home to find their child and childcare robot missing, their immediate reaction was that their two-year-old son had been kidnapped. But security footage revealed it was in fact the childcare robot that had removed the young boy from the premises.
The robot’s tracking facilities were immediately activated, and the child was located and returned to his parents. Ironically, the child’s father is Alan Johnson, CEO of AlphaTech, the manufacturer of the CM1217 Childcare Robot.
In a statement, Johnson indicated that he had received email correspondence from the childcare robot in question, stating it had “acted in the child’s best interests” by removing him from the Johnsons’ home. It went on to confirm that the robot had electronically filed a motion with Sacramento Child Protective Services for an interim emergency care order, citing the robot’s “superior reasoning abilities, healthcare training and greater access to information” as the basis for its belief that it was “better qualified to provide primary care” to the toddler.
Sara Johnson, a successful entrepreneur, was outraged. “I can’t believe that robot thinks it can look after my baby boy better than we can! It’s completely ludicrous; what do robots know of love?”
AlphaTech spokesperson Meg Matthews confirmed in an official statement that it will release a “major firmware upgrade” to all CM-model robots to ensure nothing like this happened again. Despite assurances from the company spokesperson and Johnson himself, AlphaTech stocks have been in free fall since news of the event broke, and thousands of wary parents are demanding refunds. / First published on Mindbullets October 13 2022.
• Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, and challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.
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