Elon Musk has predicted that AI will prevent anyone needing to work and will raise worldwide incomes at the same time. But will it rustle up a quick lamprey à la Bordelaise at a minute’s notice, to be washed down with a vintage Ch. Bruce Anderson? Greek comic poets had far more satisfying fantasies.

Perhaps encouraged by philosophers like Plato who dreamed up visions of past times when, for example, birds and animals were tame and conversed happily with men on a wide range of topics, comedians took to constructing a fantasy derived from the almost universal ownership of slaves; the point being that, although slaves should do everything you wanted, they were so devious, incompetent or simply lazy that there was no guarantee anything would be done properly, or indeed at all.

So the comic fantasy comprised a golden age without slaves, when everything was done for everyone automatos (good Greek word), to perfection, no human effort required. It was a world in which food and utensils could move on command and would do precisely as they were told: ‘Set yourself up here, table! Fill up my cup, ladle! Where’s the cup? Go and wash yourself! Fish, get on to my plate!’ ‘But I’m not done on the other side.’ ‘Then turn over and baste yourself with oil and salt!’

Hot baths were a great luxury for the ancients, so comedians imagined warm water being drawn up in columns from the sea to flow of their own accord into every man’s bath. The ointment bottle, full of perfume, would also come immediately on command, together with sponge and sandals. Nature, too, responded automatos to man’s every need. It rained wine, hot pease pudding and raisins. Rivers rolled down barley-cakes, hot sausage slices, cheesecakes, baked squid, anchovies and pancakes. Trees sprouted tender cuttlefish, while the dew warmed pancakes, and roast thrushes begged men, lying stretched out among the myrtles and anemones, to swallow them.

That’s more like it! Sadly, AI looks unlikely ever to be a really useful slave. And even were it to become one, doubtless it would bring a case to be heard by AI lawyers that its inhuman rights had been infringed.