YOU have caught a driverless bus into town, downed a schooner of beer pulled by a droid and eaten a meal cooked by a computer.
Tomorrow you will start looking for a new job because yours — and many others — is now being done by a robot.
That scenario is not as far away as we may think, according to the Bank of England boss Mark Carney, who this week repeated the bank’s warning that 15 million people in Britain could be put out of work by a “merciless technological revolutionâ€, reports The Sun.
Jobs that use maths, such as bookies and bankers, are in the firing line, and workers on less than £30,000 ($A51,000) a year are five times more likely to be replaced by machines than higher paid roles.
Here, we look into the near future to examine which industries are most at risk.
SEX
Your love life could be at risk as well as your job.
So-called “sex tech†is advancing at an incredible pace. Relationships expert Helen Driscoll claims interactive, motion-sensing robots are likely to become central to the sex industry in the next few years.
Dr Driscoll said some people would “choose this in preference to sex with a less-than-perfect human beingâ€.
Sex doll maker RealDoll is working on a toy that will blink, open its mouth and talk to users.
David Levy, an AI expert, argues by 2050 “robots will have the capacity to fall in love with humansâ€.
RETAIL
Amazon plans to deliver goods by driverless drones, while at its warehouse, humans are already directed to collect the correct item by AI.
Even they are set to be out of a job thanks to Amazon’s $A850 million Robotics wing, acquired in 2012.
In the US, retailer Target has been testing an inventory robot called Tally, while Best Buy uses “Chloeâ€, which can retrieve goods from the aisles.
Skype’s co-founders have created Starship, which can travel along the pavement and deliver up to nine kilograms of goods. It has been tested in 20 US cities.
MEDICINE
Robots are already at work in hospitals, pharmacies and GP surgeries.
The Da Vinci system is used in keyhole procedures, while magnetic microbots perform delicate eye surgery.
In the UK V-Max robots are used at hospital pharmacies in Doncaster and Bassetlaw, and have halved the time for dispensing and delivering medication.
At the University of California, seven pharmacy jobs have been lost to a similar system.
Robots could also soon detect if an elderly person has fallen at home or if their blood pressure drops.
MANUFACTURING
A device from Denmark-based Universal Robots solders, paints, screws, glues and grasps — and builds new parts for itself when they wear out.
That’s a pretty attractive prospect to manufacturers but the UK is playing catch-up when it comes to robo workers.
While our car industry is investing more in robotics, there are only 71 robots per 10,000 factory employees here. In South Korea, there are 500 and in Germany and Japan, 300.
The first robot-only factory is set for China, while Airbus hopes its own tech will help build its planes.
SERVICE INDUSTRY
Bartenders are already being replaced by machines.
Aboard Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas liner, the N1-C serves the drinks.
Waiters could also lose their jobs. Diners at the Haohai Robot Restaurant in northern China are seated by droids, who take their orders and cook their food — and do the dishes.
At the Wishdoing restaurant in Shanghai, robots can whip up eight speciality dishes in three minutes.
In the UK, London’s Moley Robotics hopes to market a £10,000 pair of robotic arms that can copy the actions of a chef.
FARMING
Robot milking machines are used on 5 per cent of British farms, while trials of a broccoli-picker that works six times faster than a human are also under way.
The French use the Wall-Ye robot in vineyards to prune vines and harvest grapes.
In Australia, the SwagBot can herd cattle and pull trailers through mud.
Fitness trackers could be used on farm animals to monitor their health, and sensors in fields, water and tractors will use data and machines to sense and respond to the environment and maximise food production.
CONSTRUCTION
Builders in hard hats could be replaced by overhead drones, robotic bulldozers and 3D printers.
Alison Carnwath, head of UK construction firm Land Securities, warned “we’re not that far off†from skyscrapers being built by machines.
In Japan, robots have dramatically reduced welding time on construction sites, while one firm, Komatsu, uses drones to provide the eyes for automated bulldozers.
A bricklaying firm in France uses machines to put bricks on to pallets. It is possible they could lay bricks and concrete too.
TRANSPORT
An electric driverless car was tested in public for the first time in the UK in October, prompting fears driving jobs could be redundant in the future.
Driverless Tube trains in London could be in service by the mid-2020s, which transport unions say would be a lethal mistake.
In September the first self-driving bus service started in Lyon, France. The 15-seaters, which run at 6mph, cannot yet negotiate other vehicles so only run on routes away from other traffic.
Driverless taxis are a real prospect, too. App-based car hire Uber is already looking at the technology.
BANKING
More than 500 jobs were axed at RBS earlier this year, with robo-advisers taking their place.
As Mark Carney echoed this week, the Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, warned last year that jobs were at risk from machines.
But he said that not only have they replaced “manual human tasks but cognitive ones tooâ€.
He added: “The set of human skills machines could reproduce, at lower cost, has both widened and deepened.â€
It makes cash counters look positively ancient.
ADMIN JOBS
There has been a considerable drop in librarians, travel agents, PAs and secretaries as firms rely more on computers.
In Warrington, Cheshire, nine libraries are under threat from book lockers.
Readers would order their books online and collect them at the locker without dealing with a single human.
But if you thought robots could not replicate a service with a smile, think again.
Last year a university in Singapore unveiled “Nadine†who can recognise past guests and spark up conversation based on previous chats.