Back when the world seemed bright and ambitious--another century, it might have been--I managed to convince myself, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, that what I really needed in my life was an assistant. This was December, the month when traditionally I can no longer outrun the clerical tasks that have stalked me since the middle of the year. I had weeks of crinkled receipts to expense: the year-end tax on negligence. I was halfway through the process of contesting the charge on a vaccine shot that my insurance company had refused to cover, and I had to transcribe hours of interviews before I could begin to write--the only use of my time which generates an income. As a moonless night wore on, filled with snacking and monsters, I futzed with the formulas in my sad expense spreadsheets and knew that these were hours of life I'd never get back.

In the more advanced consumer goods and services economies, the personal data of billions of people is the most precious of all digital fuels. An entire industry is emerging around the concept that data is the most precious asset in any enterprise, in any industry. Economists are working to determine how to value personal data. Its immense value is reflected in the soaring stock values and astronomical cash flows and profits of companies that monopolize and leverage data. Personal data is a uniquely magical economic asset.

Can you imagine your stylist being a bot capable of giving you clothing advice based on human input? Well, to stay ahead in the $3 trillion global fashion industry, retailers are turning to stylists and personal shoppers to help them fine-tune algorithms that help them serve their customers better. By infusing bots with humanity, fashion-forward companies like Japanese high street brand Uniqlo, are finding innovative ways of staying ahead with their competitors. Rei Inamoto, the founder of Inamoto & Co., the New York-based firm behind Uniqlo's technology, believes that when somebody asks, 'What should I wear?' they're looking for a personalised answer which gives them a useful edge. Taking a different approach, some companies are finding various ways of offering customers both customisation and convenience.

Can't decide what to wear? Uniqlo, the Japanese fast-fashion chain, has a solution: A chatbot that gives clothing recommendations based on human input, as well as your purchasing history and . . . The technology, which has been years in the making, is just one example of the extremes that retailers are going to as they try to build computer algorithms that can intuit the intangibles of fashion. "Instead of making something that's purely mechanical - you bought this last month, so you might like this - we're infusing humanity into the process," said Rei Inamoto, founder of Inamoto & Co., the New York-based firm behind Uniqlo's technology. "When somebody asks, 'What should I wear?' they're looking for a personalized answer."