THE FUTURE
I believe that genetic programming will someday allow us (rich people) to create a custom-designed servant race to perform all the remaining unmechanized menial labour that we (rich people) currently have to pay poor people to do.
The genetically-designed servant of the future will have a humanoid body and the head of a dog. It will have opposable thumbs and be slightly more intelligent than the higher primates. It will be capable of understanding small subsets of a language, but incapable of producing it.
The canine appearance will be settled on after significant market research, focus-grouping and analysis of fMRI data. Early prototypes with more human-like facial features will be found to raise unsettling ethical questions in the mind of the potential buyer, while feline variations will be judged to be too “feral” and threatening. Cats, apparently, don’t scale very well.
The “Canine Humanoid Intelligent Assistant” (CHIA) will score highly on averaged consumer emotional-response metrics like “familiarity” and “trustworthiness,” while remaining comfortably, undeniably sub-human. CHIA pets average about four feet in height; they stand upright and have a noble, dignified posture with no ape-like slouching. Their bodies will be covered in dog-hair, but they will wear clothes anyway.
In the future, there will be a CHIA pet in every home.
Oh, and everyone will be freakishly deformed.
This is a glimpse into the future.