Whatever happened to the human touch? If you believe the latest fad from the tech world, it won’t be long before we give up talking to real people and start talking instead to machines — or “bots”. Or it might be machines pretending to be people, or people pretending to be machines. The permutations of human and artificial intelligence are about to become interesting.

But if it works as advertised, we will move one step further beyond a world of direct human interaction towards a future when screens — and new ways of engaging with computer intelligence — govern much of our lives. For sheer convenience, it will be hard to resist. Less obvious is what might be lost in the process.

Facebook has just given this trend its biggest lift with the release this week of a way for companies to plug their bots into Messenger, its chat system. Want to know the weather? Ask a question and an intelligent agent will answer. Interested in buying something? Bots on hand will show you the latest offers and guide you through to the checkout.