BY 2025, up to a quarter of jobs will be carried out by robots or software rather than people, it’s predicted, with around 35% of jobs here in the UK alone at risk of automation by then.

That is a frightening prediction for the future of the human race. If you take Brighton and Hove, for example, that could, I calculate, account for as many as 53,000* people being displaced from their jobs by machines.

Imagine that. It could be your job, whether you work in a shop, an office or a factory, and how long will it be before we follow in the footsteps of Japan, where already a hotel is ‘manned’ by robots? Yes, the Weird Hotel ‘employs’ a dinosaur robot as a receptionist and automated trolleys as porters to “achieve efficiency”, says its owner.

The running costs of robots will eventually be cheaper than a human workforce, with no gripes about pay or conditions or contracts, no sick days, no job vacancies to fill, no strikes, no maternity or paternity leave, no male/female quotas to fulfil, no promotions or demotions or redundancies to worry about, in fact no disagreements about anything.

We will just have a world with an increasing population of humans with nothing to do and no way to earn a living, and a dwindling reason for them to live at all.

In other words, humans are doing the human race a huge disservice. With the same distanced detachment displayed by the governments that outsource their killings to the robots known as drones, scientists compelled by their own enquiring minds to push the boundaries of human achievement are outsourcing basic human functions to mindless machines – with no concern for the consequences for humans themselves.

And now machines are no longer mindless. Pepper, the emotional robot, has been invented in (yes, of course) Japan, the “first humanoid robot designed to live with humans”. It can pick up on human emotions and create its own – and people have been snapping them up since Pepper became available for $1,600 in June.

The Channel 4 drama Humans, which explored the impact of the blurring of the lines between humans and machines, doesn’t seem so far-fetched now. The only difference between Pepper and the synth Anita/Mia, played by Gemma Chan, is that Pepper is four feet tall and looks like a mini Storm Trooper from Star Wars while Anita/Mia actually resembles a person. The storyline I found most disturbing was how the live-in synth nurse (played by Rebecca Front) assigned to “care” for William Hurt’s ailing professor in his home was unable to deviate from her programmed “orders” and forced a vulnerable man to obey her against his will. He had no control over her, remotely programmed by remote strangers.

It was a truly terrifying scenario and one we could be potentially walking into with eyes wide shut. It’s natural for humans to invent, to use their brains, to be open to the new and the novel. They are some of the unique abilities that put humans at the top of the evolutionary tree.

So how ironic that it is these very abilities that threaten to knock us off our top spot and make us redundant. If we succeed in making a “better” version of ourselves, where does that leave us?

The Argus:

This week, the viewing pod is going to be added to the i360 observation tower on Brighton seafront.

The doughnut-shaped vertical cable car, the first in the world, arrived last week and installation is taking place this week. Once installed, the glass viewing pod will glide slowly up the 450-foot high tower, giving visitors a slowly unfolding 360-degree view of up to 26 miles.

The pod will be big, because it will be able to hold 200 people at a time, and they will be able to move around in it freely.

I really hope the doughnut improves the i360 aesthetically, because to be honest, the stark grey metal tower is not pretty. Metal is not my favourite material for any building or structure anywhere because it tends not to weather well – and here on the coast it will certainly have to withstand the salty sea air. But I’m quite willing to change my mind once the construction is complete. Perhaps the glass pod will twinkle invitingly in the sunshine as it ascends and descends, and become an eye-catching novelty.

I’m keeping my mind open and my fingers crossed.

*This is how I calculated this figure: the city is expected to have a population of 290,000 by 2021. Around 70% (203,000 people) are likely to be of working age (16 to 64), with around 52,000 not working. That leaves around 151,000 people in work, 35% of which works out at 53,000 people.