New Delhi, Oct. 24 -- An image seems to have caught the attention of AI reporters these days. It shows a woman, looking none too happy, washing dishes with clinical efficiency while a big robot stands next to her, learning to do the job as well. She has to repeat this and a few other tasks 200 times so the robot gets them right. It's not a badly paid job, but soon she probably won't have it because the idea is, of course, to replace human workers with robots. She's apparently 40 and exhausted, so she may not mind going home to put her feet up. But the AI hasn't said what she could be doing instead.

With the planet creaking under the weight of its human population, I've never understood why we have to create artificial humans instead of l...