Facebook’s bots are already revolting

Facebook has become a social network for cyborgs. It happened yesterday at Facebook developer conference F8 while everyone was busy eye-rolling over Mark Zuckerberg's keynote about saving the world. The company has launched a bot revolution, and ironically (or not), these bots will eventually replace tech workers in the exact emerging markets that Zuck vowed to rescue with his largesse.

Bots will make it easy to leapfrog over apps, but they will also do something that bots always do—at least, in science fiction. They will replace humans. Already, many of us spend time talking to bots on the phone, learning to enunciate our account numbers clearly enough for their voice recognition systems. With Facebook's help, we'll be talking to them a lot more. Bots will be the automated service workers of the next five years, allowing you to circumvent humans in your quest to get everything from tech support to airline tickets.