AI in the food industry, according to Tait, will also assist with automating reservations and customer service questions, which would ease workloads for human employees and restaurant owners. While the tech will also help restaurants "better manage stock and not over order" by analyzing "what products are selling well and detect and respond to consumer demand for a specific product."

An international campaign takes its battle to outlaw "killer robots" to the UN this week with a new ally – a "peace robot". Created by an inventor from the BBC programme Robot Wars, the droid, known as David Wreckham, has been recruited to deliver a message to world leaders in New York on Monday. The robot will drop a letter to UN diplomats demanding that robots not guided by human remote control which could accidentally start wars or cause mass atrocities should be outlawed by the same type of international treaty that bans chemical weapons. Unlike drones, which are controlled by military teams often thousands of miles away from where they are deployed, critics say that autonomous killer robots have the potential to do disastrous things they were not originally programmed for. Wreckham will also visit the Manhattan headquarters of hi-tech corporations, calling on them to desist from developing technologies for autonomous weapons.

The past two decades have seen the workplace transformed by digital advances. Gone are many traditional structures and practices, replaced with new ways of doing business, designed to support collaboration and digitally-enabled remote and flexible working. As the technology behind AI and robotics becomes more sophisticated, the number of jobs that remain untouched by automation will decrease. "To keep pace, businesses must rethink how they organise work, reinvent jobs, redeploy staff and implement robust plans for the future," says Lynda Gratton, professor of management practice at London Business School (LBS). There are also emerging social trends and shifting demographics to consider.