When I’m sat at home being forced to watch the soaps, my mind wanders. I do the usual checks. Did I turn the lights off? Is the hob off? And then it goes somewhere else entirely.

The one about my job

I don’t need to worry about work tomorrow, because AI is going to take my job and make me its pet. Fine.

But if I’m not working, and you’re not working, who needs us to be working?

The state needs me working, for the tax. The AI companies need me working too, so I keep buying the tech. Tech that is already heavily subsidised.

Are we sure we’re all about to go on extended leave? And does that mean I won’t get my limitless supply of bananas?

So whose interest does it actually serve for AI to take all the jobs?

The one about the hackers

Or an advert comes on, an email lands, often pretending to be from my own account, letting me know they have access to it, and to my computer.

At this point I’m already intrigued. Between the MFA, and a disgustingly long and complicated password, and a camera that doesn’t work half the time, and ninety per cent of my time online split between telling an LLM to stop gaslighting me while I write thousands of lines of code and watching He-Man reruns on social media, they have taken the time to trawl my sixteen hours a day across multiple devices.

I don’t get that level of commitment from my partner. My family. My doctor. Even the taxman. I’m genuinely touched.

Although I can’t remember my own partner’s mobile number, only my house number from forty years ago, and maybe two email addresses that aren’t work ones. But a stranger has me down to the last detail?

Do I really think a stranger cares that much? Of all the people they could spend their precious time on, they chose me?

Or is it more likely that the red kettle I liked, from a website I signed up to five years ago and never went back to, and never even got the kettle because it was the wrong red apparently, was hacked. And now they have a spreadsheet with the details I used at sign-up, and I’m row 2,368. Or 8,745. Or 9,534.