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> They depend on humans behaving as interchangeable units of labor.

This isn’t a new problem...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q030WNZvXrA

(Clock scene from Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927))

Metropolis (2001), directed by Rintaro with screenplay by Katsuhiro Otomo (the Akira director). Phenomenal set illustrations, unusual character animation that intentionally harks back to the 1950s or earlier, and a fab soundtrack. The plot isn't the strongest and the aesthetic is divisive - I know some people really don't like it - but if it's your kind of thing, it's glorious.

Test movies
"Roman Holiday Trailer (1953)" https://youtu.be/pKtYv6cU8VE
"Tokyo Story Trailer (1953)" https://youtu.be/-PsCZ1D_Brg
"Metropolis Trailer (1927)" https://youtu.be/RAvtbcmusY8

> But this one interests me: Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders.

But that is not a new prediction. Socialism for example came about in the mid 1800's on the basis of an optimistic view of what would be possible thanks to the industrial revolution - the idea that machines could put us in a position able to eradicate poverty - but also pessimism about how it would turn workers into cogs in a machine.

This latter view came to shape a a lot of thinking and art for decades. In the cinema there are many obvious examples, such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) to Charlie Chaplins "Modern Times" (1936).

The latter makes it literal: Chaplin goes crazy due to the monotonous, high speed work and horrible treatment (including being used as a guinea pig for a machine designed to feed the workers lunch more efficiently). He starts seeing everything, such as buttons, as machine parts and nuts and bolts, and keeps trying to fasten them.

Eventually he gets pulled into the machine he is tending to and is shown as being moved along by the giant cogs.

Book: George Orwell's "1984" : NSA spying, social network spying, adware too. Politically congressional bills have sweet sounding names like PATRIOT Act, and we seemingly change sides in regards to middle east wars.

Movie: Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" - In the future of 2026, wealthy [technocrats, energy barons, and Wall Street bankers] rule the vast city of Metropolis from high-rise tower complexes, while a lower class of underground-dwelling [Chinese and Mexican workers] toil constantly to operate the machines that provide its power.

Freder looked across the city at the building known to the world as the "New Tower of Babel."

In the brain-pan of this New Tower of Babel lived the man who was himself the Brain of Metropolis.

As long as the man over there, who was nothing but work, despising sleep, eating and drinking mechanically, pressed his fingers on the blue metal plate, which apart from himself, no man had ever touched, so long would the voice of the machine-city of Metropolis roar for food, for food, for food...

She wanted living men for food.

Then the living food came pushing along in masses. Along the street it came, along its own street which never crossed with other people's streets. It rolled on, a broad, an endless stream. The stream was twelve files deep. They walked in even step. Men, men, men--all in the same uniform, from throat to ankle in dark blue linen, bare feet in the same hard shoes, hair tightly pressed down by the same black caps.

And they all had the same faces. And they all appeared to be of the same age. They held themselves straightened up, but not straight. They did not raise their heads, they pushed them forward. They planted their feet forward, but they did not walk. The open gates of the New Tower of Babel, the machine center of Metropolis, gulped the masses down.

An snippet from Metropolis by Thea Von Harbou