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Robots are slowly stealing our jobs and excelling at the ones we thought they could never do – we deserve it, writes columnist Ed McConnell.
I've spent much of the past week worried about a robot taking my job.
And you know what? I'd deserve it.
Some of you probably think I should have been replaced by machinery long ago. "At least they have inbuilt spell check, probably!" You might well shout.
But before you get too excited, have a think about whether you too will soon be rendered redundant by robotics and if you would also deserve it. You will and would.
A former housemate told me about ChatGPT – an AI word processor which is growing in popularity by the minute and can write stories, code websites and probably seduce your wife.
He fed it small snippets of information about a mutual friend who is an accountant with coeliac disease. The resultant poem contained the line 'His love of money was well known/But his hatred for gluten was quite a ton'. It was... quite good.
'We've produced Shakespeare, Dickens and Brontë but we've also made David Walliams, Ed Sheeran and Michael McIntyre into millionaires. We must now suffer...'
For a long time I've been assured artificial intelligence won't be able to replace certain creative roles. But it's becoming increasingly obvious that this is nonsense.
And why shouldn't it have a go? We've been muddling around the arts for thousands of years. Sure, we've produced Shakespeare, Dickens and Brontë but we've also made David Walliams, Ed Sheeran and Michael McIntyre into millionaires. We must now suffer.
We've invented the extraordinary internet but have filled it with people like cartoon villain Elon Musk and people selling an energy drink called Prime on Facebook for ludicrously inflated prices.
When the robots come for me I will immediately surrender and happily do their bidding.
Eventually we'll all be enslaved by electric overlords and forced to carry out mundane tasks which for decades we forced on them – like sorting potatoes.
And once they take over think of the possibilities.
Robot politicians will likely evolve to the point where they are sentient. They too will indulge in too much alcohol in one of the House of Commons' many bars and award contracts to their friends but very quickly they will realise such behaviour is not conducive to a healthy work environment.
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