I’VE seen the future, and it terrifies me to bits. It ought to terrify all of you, too.

Ah, but how do you know that it is me writing this?

It could be a robot. Some might say a robot would make a better job of it!

Baffled? Well, what I’ve actually seen is an article about the startlingly rapid advances in artificial intelligence (which I’ll abbreviate to AI from now on).

And there’s a computer system out there that’s now able to generate articles that would be indistinguishable from mine, or those of any other writer you care to name.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it would say what I might want to say.

It’s open to manipulation by whoever’s operating it. All they’d do is feed in an article of mine. Then, having analysed my style, it would turn one out all by itself, and nobody would be able to tell that it wasn’t by me.

Fake news that you really can’t tell apart from the real thing. Honestly, is there anything mankind can invent that can’t be put to destructive use?

A Guardian journalist experimented with this AI system (which is backed by mega-rich tech entrepreneur Elon Musk) and it produced an article that the paper didn’t dare put up on its website for fear that readers would be fooled by it.

So they confined it to their print edition, where it could be properly explained.

Isn’t this invention a gift to the information warriors and mischief-makers of countries like Russia?

Some might say: “So what? I don’t believe anything I read in the press anyway.”

But that’s just a throwaway remark. I think you’ll find you do. You have to get your information somewhere. We all need to trust something, don’t we?

If we really believe nothing we’re told, how can society, let alone democracy, exist?

Economic pressures – largely down to the mad rush to put everything online, where advertisers won’t pay enough to keep a business alive, coupled with a refusal to invest in staff - are already killing off the newspaper industry.

The struggle is most visible in local papers, but circulation figures are falling fast throughout the national press, too.

Other than the BBC, for which we ought to thank God, who will be left to speak the truth?

Who will you rely on? Facebook? Google? Really?

I read another interesting article last week, and its argument was this. Britain needs a dreadful, no-deal Brexit, because it’s the only thing that will force us to wake up and face the reality of what’s become of our country.

The writer had a point. It feels to me as though the assorted Old Etonians and Oxbridge graduates (often the same) who figure so disproportionately at the top of our government and our mass media are so complacent and largely so unchallenged that only disaster on our own doorsteps will galvanise the rest of us into playing our part in putting things right.

Prophet of doom? That’s the way I feel right now. Tell me why I’m wrong.

anneriddle36@gmail.com