New Delhi, Feb. 27 -- The age of artificial intelligence (AI), heralded by the 2022 advent of ChatGPT, has given birth to a peculiar form of conventional wisdom. The reigning corporate orthodoxy insists that AI shall automate menial tasks, freeing the world's brilliant and creative to do what they do best. Comforting, certainly. Is it true? Few dare to answer this with unalloyed honesty.

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, however, offers no such reassurance. His prognostications verge on the ruthless. Not only has he candidly enumerated the many human jobs already rendered obsolete at his company, he also foresees a near future where machines ascend to such unerring competence that they supplant most human labour-including his own.

It ...