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This is his latest prompt which I am sure you will agree has produced a remarkable output.

'Draw an image of a horse using the following guidelines. The horse is intellectually the wrong horse. It is not perhaps going too far to say that this horse is a donkey. For it is obviously within even the intellectual resources of a haddock to answer, "But if a haddock is a horse, why should I yield to you any more than you to me? Why should that singing horse commonly called the nightingale, or that climbing horse hitherto known as the cat, fall down and worship you because of your horsehood? If all our native faculties are the accomplishments of a horse then why then you are only another horse without any accomplishments." When thus gently reasoned with, the horse flings up his heels, kicks the cat, crushes the oyster, eats the haddock and pursues the nightingale, and that is how it began.'

Well done Martin, we are looking forward to seeing what you come up with next.

As your Technology-Futures Champion, I have been asked to set down my view of the world in 2040. This was probably prompted by everyone saying “AI” in the same tone they used to say “the cloud”, i.e. without understanding anything about it.

By 2040 the computer will no longer be a separate object, so the word will fall out of common usage completely. It will just be part of the light switch, the car, the fridge, the hearing aid, the council form, the boiler, the doorbell, and even the collection plate will have the ability to sound an alarm if someone passes it along without contributing. This will all be built in the name of convenience. It will also mean that when something stops working, nobody will know whether to call an electrician, an IT person, a mechanic, or the manufacturer.

Artificial intelligence will be more like a junior committee member than a robot. It will write minutes, summarise complaints, suggest dates, fill in forms, and occasionally invent a person who was not at the meeting.

There is already a great deal of talk about “agents”. These are computer programmes that do things on your behalf. In theory this means your tap can phone the plumber for you and your fridge can order milk when it’s running low.

Photographs and videos will no longer be proof of anything by themselves. By 2040 a person will be able to produce a moving picture of Geoff opening the Chapel door to Madonna and each person will have the correct number of fingers on each hand. To keep any grip on reality, the future will require old-fashioned habits such as careful recording of dates, names, signatures, and not believing anything that doesn't have a fully documented chain-of-custody.

Passwords will be replaced by faces, fingerprints, passkeys, devices, and other “frictionless” methods. I have concerns about anything described as frictionless, as friction is often the part that stops a thing sliding away from you.

Quantum computers will become important, especially for security, and we must prepare for “post-quantum cryptography”. I do not claim to understand every aspect of this, but I believe the practical message is: do not use the same password for the Chapel email, the shopping account, and the thing that controls the heating.

Robots will exist, but mostly where floors are flat. Robots will never be able to climb stairs, so you will still need to hire a cleaner.

Energy will be a major issue. AI uses electricity. Data centres use electricity. Heat pumps use electricity. Cars use electricity. Everything will be clever, but it will all still need plugging in. There will be wires everywhere unless wireless charging becomes more reliable.

My prediction is that 2040 will not look like science fiction. It will look like today, but we will spend more time signing our appliances' privacy policies and terms of use paperwork.