Will Artificial Intelligence put my job at risk?

I used to feel smug when plumbers, bricklayers and the like used to complain of Eastern European migrants coming over here and taking their work. They might be able to replace a ballcock and lay a line of bricks but the one thing these Poles won’t be able to do, unless they happen to be Joseph Conrad, is write good English. My job would be safe.

But there was a great big hole in my thinking: I hadn’t reckoned on artificial intelligence. What happens – as it will do any day now – when the editor of the Spectator receives a salesman, or even a sales robot, peddling a device which cuts his contributors’ bill down to next to nothing? That’s all you have do, Mr Nelson: tap in the subject matter there, choose the word length, and then select a box on the right: ‘standard Conservative viewpoint’, ‘slightly loopy’, ‘testing even the patience of Speccie-readers’, or ‘Rod Liddle’, press ‘write’ and there instantly you have your piece.