Something happened on November 30 that many experts believe could rank among the seminal moments in modern technology. At first, it sounds underwhelming: a company in California released a chatbot. Not a primitive "how can I help you" chatbot that appears on websites, leaving you yearning for human interaction. This is the most sophisticated chatbot yet, and it has left even the most cynical and knowledgeable observers slack-jawed at its capabilities. More than two million people have been playing with ChatGPT, discovering that it can write scripts, essays, contracts, computer code, jokes, poems and marketing pitches to a high level. It synthesises long pieces of text, does business analysis, translates languages, gives creative suggestions and can answer hypotheticals.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has long been the object of excitement and fear. In July, the Financial Times Future Forum think-tank convened a panel of experts to discuss the realities of AI -- what it can and cannot do, and what it may mean for the future. Entitled "The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Business and Society", the event, hosted by John Thornhill, the innovation editor of the FT, featured Kriti Sharma, founder of AI for Good UK, Michael Wooldridge, professor of computer sciences at Oxford university, and Vivienne Ming, co-founder of Socos Labs. For the purposes of the discussion, AI was defined as "any machine that does things a brain can do". Intelligent machines under that definition still have many limitations: we are a long way from the sophisticated cyborgs depicted in the Terminator films. Such machines are not yet self-aware and they cannot understand context, especially in language. Operationally, too, they are limited by the historical data from which they learn, and restricted to functioning within set parameters. Rose Luckin, professor at University College London Knowledge Lab and author of Machine Learning and Human Intelligence, points out that AlphaGo, the computer that beat a professional (human) player of Go, the board game, cannot diagnose cancer or drive a car.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has long been the object of excitement and fear. In July, the Financial Times Future Forum think-tank convened a panel of experts to discuss the realities of AI -- what it can and cannot do, and what it may mean for the future. Entitled "The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Business and Society", the event, hosted by John Thornhill, the innovation editor of the FT, featured Kriti Sharma, founder of AI for Good UK, Michael Wooldridge, professor of computer sciences at Oxford university, and Vivienne Ming, co-founder of Socos Labs. For the purposes of the discussion, AI was defined as "any machine that does things a brain can do". Intelligent machines under that definition still have many limitations: we are a long way from the sophisticated cyborgs depicted in the Terminator films. Such machines are not yet self-aware and they cannot understand context, especially in language. Operationally, too, they are limited by the historical data from which they learn, and restricted to functioning within set parameters. Rose Luckin, professor at University College London Knowledge Lab and author of Machine Learning and Human Intelligence, points out that AlphaGo, the computer that beat a professional (human) player of Go, the board game, cannot diagnose cancer or drive a car.

I've always loved movie robots, even the bad ones. But as the machines around us become unnervingly smarter, it's hard not to worry that artificial intelligence with malign intent--some version of the Terminator or HAL--will eventually be unleashed on the real world. Stephen Hawking warned that "the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." And when the Oxford philosopher Toby Ord examined a host of existential threats--asteroids, nuclear war, climate change--for his bracing book The Precipice, he ranked "unaligned artificial intelligence" the most probable of all. Plunging into the latest crop of AI books, I was somewhat comforted by experts' consensus that "the singularity"--the point at which AI surpasses human intelligence--is not imminent; guesses about the timing range from a few decades to centuries from now.

What do we need to consider about a future where artificial intelligence (AI) and tech have transformed the way we live? That was exactly what we pondered when I recently spoke withJamie Susskind, barrister, speaker and award-winning author of Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech. Digitization is challenging the way we live. These changes create conveniences and ways of problem-solving that were never possible before. Along with the positives, there are also challenges that need to be overcome.

What do we need to consider about a future where artificial intelligence (AI) and tech have transformed the way we live? That was exactly what we pondered when I recently spoke with Jamie Susskind, barrister, speaker and award-winning author of Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech. Digitization is challenging the way we live. These changes create conveniences and ways of problem-solving that were never possible before. Along with the positives, there are also challenges that need to be overcome.

What do we need to consider about a future where artificial intelligence (AI) and tech have transformed the way we live? That was exactly what we pondered when I recently spoke with Jamie Susskind, barrister, speaker and award-winning author of Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech. Digitization is challenging the way we live. These changes create conveniences and ways of problem-solving that were never possible before. Along with the positives, there are also challenges that need to be overcome.

The term "technological unemployment" was popularised in the 1930s by the celebrated economist John Maynard Keynes. Fifty years later, another renowned economist called Wassily Leontief warned that jobs for humans might follow the same path that jobs for horses did in the early 20th century. So the idea has a respectable economic heritage, but economists are still arguing about whether it will actually happen. The latest contribution comes from Daniel Susskind, a member of an unreasonably talented family of lawyers, economists and academics. His economic credentials are strong: previously an adviser at Number 10, he is now a fellow at Balliol College, Oxford.

New technologies have always provoked panic about workers being replaced by machines. In the past, such fears have been misplaced, and many economists maintain that they remain so today. Yet in A World Without Work, Daniel Susskind shows why this time really is different. Advances in artificial intelligence mean that all kinds of jobs are increasingly at risk. Susskind will argue that machines no longer need to reason like us in order to outperform us.

Oscar Wilde dreamed of a world without work. In The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891) he imagined a society liberated from drudgery by the machine: "while Humanity will be amusing itself, or enjoying cultivated leisure … or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will be doing all the necessary and unpleasant work." This aesthete's Eden prompted one of his most famous observations: "Is this Utopian? A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at." In Wilde's day the future of work was the first question that every aspiring utopian, from Edward Bellamy to HG Wells, needed to answer.