REMEMBER when science-fiction writers spent their time trying to convince readers that the end of the human race would be caused by a robot uprising?

Even if you’ve never read Asimov (and I’ll be honest, I haven’t), there have been enough TV shows, films and comic sketches to burn the idea into public consciousness. Whenever a new technical gadget is unveiled, the media is filled with headlines preparing us for the worst.

Sometimes they’re valid, with online safety an increasing concern and warnings to the public that the rise of social media and an increasingly online world means our computers could shop for us in our sleep - not in itself that harrowing a proposition, but one which could be abused by human hackers should they wish.

I suppose it was probably never going to be a concern on the scale of Skynet - the fictional computer defence system from James Cameron’s Terminator films which analysed international security and decided the only real threat to humankind was humankind itself, so developed near-indestructible robot assassins that look like Austrian bodybuilders to wipe them out.

Obviously, industrialisation and computerisation has caused problems - listening to the new, brilliant album by Public Service Broadcasting, I was struck by the positive way the mechanisation of the coal industry was put forward, before the obvious human cost and destruction of mining communities which followed.

This week, billionaire tech geeks Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have been rowing in public about the dangers of artificial intelligence - Zuckerberg says naysayers are speculating about “doomsday scenarios”, while Musk is urging for regulation of AI as he believes it poses a “fundamental risk to the existence of civilisation”.

Personally, I’m with Team Musk on this one - since a guy was killed in one of his ‘driverless cars’ last year, I’m pretty sure we should be heeding his advice.

However, it’ll be a long while before the robots decide to overthrow their human creators because - as also seen in the news recently - they’re so affected by apathy over their jobs, they’re deciding to end it all.

A Knightscope K5 security robot - which was ordered to bumble around office blocks and shopping centres in Washington DC and is filled with sensors to act as the eyes and ears of local police - apparently threw itself down a flight of stairs and into a fountain, where it probably sang Bicycle Made For Two before its lights flickered out for the final time.

Brilliantly, it seems the robot master race can’t be bothered to take over, it’s either too much effort or they don’t see the point. Maybe that’s the way to protect ourselves - instead of aiming to create Robocop, we should stick to creating Marvin the paranoid android.

Internationally though, people are still concerned that their jobs are at risk from increasingly computer-led services - even in the newspaper industry, where cuts have been constant for decades. Earlier this month, the Press Association was granted more than £600,000 by Google to fund a program which will see computers write thousands of localised news stories each month for distribution to media outlets around the country.

While I’d rather see investment in local newsrooms, I for one welcome our new robot overlords. Why?

Because if a jumped-up Tamagotchi can write 350 words on how a national supermarket has led exclusive research to discover people in North Yorkshire love mayonnaise on their chips, and a follow-up on the concerns over a condiment shortage in the region, that’ll leave more time for us flesh and blood reporters to speak to the community about issues that matter to them, cover court cases and breaking incidents, deal with local politicians and public servants, and fill the front end of the paper with things that matter.