meeting of washing machine, dryer, fridge/freezer and Google Home. In a speech bubble the words "I’ve spoken to the washing machine and dryer and they have nothing to do with why your jeans don’t fit!"The fridge/freezer? Totally different story!

I recently found out that a friend of mine was taking Mounjaro. They’re obviously doing it the sensible way as the weight loss is slow but steady and if they hadn’t said anything I would have put it down to a sensible diet and exercise. Their revelation led of course to the obvious discussion about how hard it is to lose weight these days. Anything to drown out the food noise is welcome as we are bombarded with adverts for not just food but easy and convenient ways to get it into our homes!! Shopping centres and high streets packed with restaurants and takeaways. Adverts on TV (not such a problem for those of us streaming our content), endless food recipes on our social media, cookery programmes and the naughty algorithm sending us more and more because, let’s face it, we seem to like this kind of content!!

Anyway, it got me wondering what life would be like if we had a personal AI who only had our best interests at heart. What if instead of just sending endless recipes it started to select them based on our needs - weight loss, blood pressure, blood sugar or our mood? What if it started to fill our feed with inspirational stories about getting moving or starting new hobbies? What if it knew that you were struggling on a limited budget but it filtered out the adverts and pressures to buy, buy, buy and instead offered articles about saving money or just making it go further with ideas for cheap days out? In some ways it could be a much more subtle version of your mum because it would just nudge you towards better choices and you wouldn’t feel the need to rebel! And what if you found yourself focussing on negative thoughts and instead of more misery on your feed it started to send you positive articles and direct you to people that could help? Our phones and laptops know far more about us than any of our closest friends or relatives already. Sometimes the hardest part is reaching out so could my AI arrange a coffee with your AI?

Could AI help with all the life laundry? Be the best PA? Arrange a haircut or dental appointment because it knows the last time you went and they’re well overdue? Could it search for suitable job vacancies? Afterall it wouldn’t, in theory at least, get fed up with you never actually taking its advice or being grateful for its intervention - unlike your mum!!

We worry all the time about how much AI can or could do but actually its already doing it - just not necessarily in your best interests!