Grocery, like the rest of the business world, is in an AI frenzy. Little wonder, when so many meatbags with their rights and salary expectations and icky feelings could reasonably be replaced by software working 24 hours a day for relative peanuts.
So how worried should we all be about our livelihoods? That was the question posed by Channel 4’s Dispatches in Will AI Take My Job? (20 October, 8pm) and the resounding answer was, well, very.
Four talented professionals – working in medicine, law, fashion and music – were given a task and pitted against an AI as to who could complete it best, fastest and cheapest.
In three of the sectors, the human came out on top. Just. But with AI advancing at a rapid lick, it surely won’t be long until parity is reached.
The promise of AI, the show explained, was that it handles the white-collar grind while we all frolic and relax.
“But,” as talking head Adam Cantwell-Corn of the TUC said, “you might get the situation where AI does the poetry and creative work, and humans get left to do the drudgery”.
That creative work extends to presenting Dispatches. The host – Aisha Gaban – presented in looks, tone and style exactly as you’d expect, if occasionally slightly biased. The human doctor, for example, was “representing the honour of the entire medical profession” she said, against “a piece of software which isn’t even specialised in diagnosis”.
The reason. “Because I’m not real. In a British TV first, I’m an AI presenter,” she revealed at the end. Chilling.
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