Its fellow countdown – run by ABC Classic – usually does not. As its name implies, the Classic 100 is typically a more subdued affair. Unlike its boozy, bombastic cousin, the ABC's classical music station broadcasts the top 100 over multiple days. And since its inception in 2001, the annual countdown has been themed around certain genres or forms, asking listeners to vote for their favourite operas, symphonies and, one year, French compositions. This year, though, the Classic 100 might sound a little different.

"We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before" As the world embarks on 2019, studies published this year by the World Economic Forum and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) predict that global adaptation of advanced technology will create major shifts in the labour market as soon as 2022. In fact, this year, IDB issued a news release pointing to a 2018 study on artificial intelligence (AI), urging Latin American and Caribbean governments to anticipate the consequences of AI on the job market. As it turns out, the newest turn in human evolution has birthed a collective function of humans and machines operating in the physical and virtual world, and with it, a host of concerns for humans who will have to compete with smart technology. The study, done by the Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean (INTAL), predicts that AI could boost economies in Latin America and the Caribbean, while simultaneously offsetting job losses.

Artificial intelligence software capable of interpreting images, matching faces and analysing patterns of communication is being piloted by UK police forces to speed up examination of mobile phones seized in crime investigations. Cellebrite, the Israeli-founded and now Japanese-owned company behind some of the software, claims a wider rollout would solve problems over failures to disclose crucial digital evidence that have led to the collapse of a series of rape trials and other prosecutions in the past year. However, the move by police has prompted concerns over privacy and the potential for software to introduce bias into processing of criminal evidence. As police and lawyers struggle to cope with the exponential rise in data volumes generated by phones and laptops in even routine crime cases, the hunt is on for a technological solution to handle increasingly unmanageable workloads. Some forces are understood to have backlogs of up to six months for examining downloaded mobile phone contents.