ISAAC ASIMOV GAVE us the Three Laws of Robotics in 1942, and we have been quietly reassured by them ever since. A robot may not harm a human. A robot must obey. A robot must protect itself, but never at the expense of the first two.

Simple, hierarchical, enforceable. The stories built on those laws were almost never about robots breaking them. They were about robots following them exactly, and the consequences nobody had thought through. I believe we have forgotten this. But it is the part that really matters now.

The public conversation about artificial intelligence is still largely a conversation about disobedience. Will the system escape our control? Will it decide it no longer needs us? It makes for sensationalism or even clickbait, but it is the wrong worry. The systems already embedded in hospitals, banks, universities and public procurement offices are not straining against their instructions. They are executing them with a diligence no human committee could match.

Which is what raises a far more awkward question: what exactly have we instructed them to do?

Tell a hospital scheduling system to minimise waiting times, and it may, quite logically, learn that complex patients are inconvenient. Tell a university system to maximise completion rates, and it may discover that the most efficient route runs through lower standards. Tell a procurement system to minimise purchase price, and it will do so, while systematically dismantling supplier diversity, resilience and long-term value, none of which appear........

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