It's essentially a robot built to believe things on behalf of its owner, offloading the tiresome burden of religion to a machine.
In the book it is explained as a natural evolution of other machines, like a dishwasher washes dishes for you, a VCR watches TV for you, an electric monk believes for you.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirk_Gently%27s_Holistic_Detec...
Could you point to any literature on evidence that refutes creationism? I'm not saying there isn't any. I'm just admitting my ignorance of it. Please enlighten me.
What's "unrealistic and childish" is expecting free labour.
If it gets a major travel detail wrong, purchases a business class ticket on accident, etc. and I need to adjust the booking by calling the airline, then I’m way less happy than I was if I just bought the ticket myself. Not to mention what happens when Google flights gets a UI refresh and knocks the accuracy rate of the agent down even 10%.
Digital criminals are gonna love it, though.
I’m personally much more interested in automating browser tasks that aren’t economically valuable because that mitigates the risk.
> What a horrible thing
They offered 6 months severance which dispels any serious notion of 'cruelty'. Substance over form.