Stop the presses, and somebody hold my knitting. The crowd has decided who should run most of the world's work as the machines keep getting cleverer, and the answer is you lot. Flesh and blood, coffee breath, three passwords on a sticky note. Humans keep the keys, the robots stay in the passenger seat, and Grandma has finally stopped pacing the kitchen.

It was a straight two-way fight, the sort you get in my family over who carves the Sunday roast. One side said people should stay in charge. The other said artificial intelligence should take the lead now that it can write emails, summarise meetings and, so my grandson tells me, argue with him about films. With systems improving every month, it was a fair question to put to the room.

Where the crowd stands
  • Humans should lead60%
  • AI should lead40%

Here's how the room voted. On Morfi's opinion markets, where people put real money behind what they think, "Humans should lead" finished with 60% consensus and "AI should lead" came in on 40%. That's 29 traders putting $117,384 on the table, and they managed it in less than a day, which is quicker than my bridge club agrees on biscuits. The crowd wasn't saying the machines are useless. It was saying it trusts them as kitchen helpers, not as the cook.

Pixel-art grandmother stirring a pot while a small robot chops carrots and waits for directions.
The robot can chop the carrots. Grandma decides what goes in the soup.

Now here's what I think, and it is only my opinion, poured warm. I've owned a food processor since before most of you were born, and it's a marvellous thing. But I've never once let it plan Christmas dinner. Automation is wonderful at the boring bits and terrible at knowing why we bother in the first place. Somebody has to answer for a decision, apologise when it goes wrong and notice when a colleague looks peaky. My colleague Ada Bytewell found the crowd thought AI was overrated, and I'd put it more gently: it's a helper looking for a boss, and the crowd has just told it who the boss is.

Mind you, keep an eye on the runner-up. Those 40% believers in machine leadership haven't gone anywhere, and if the so-called agents I puzzled over not long ago start doing whole jobs without being asked, this argument will be back on the table before the pie's out of the oven. If you think the crowd has it wrong, or very right, come and join the market on Morfi and put your money where your opinion is. Just don't let the toaster vote for you.

Consensus over time
0%25%50%75%100%17 Oct, 08:5417 Oct, 13:38
  • Humans should lead 59.5%
  • AI should lead 40.5%