Languishing in the comfortable slippers of yesteryear, I’m proud of my laggard status. I’ve never knowingly been described as an early-adopter, except perhaps in the world of starchy snacks – where any new variety of potato crisp or homogenised maize-based confection is ripe for sampling.

In the early days of computers, I left keyboards to those that could already type. When the internet blinked into existence, I would watch over someone else’s shoulder while they searched for useful information about tulip bulbs and perennial plants. Had I lived in the early 19th Century, I might have been tempted to smash up labour-saving weaving looms – so it will surprise no one that, when it comes to the adoption of Artificial Intelligence, I err on the side of the Luddites.

Perhaps as a consequence, I have managed to carve out a living from horseracing – a centuries old sport where people climb on horses and dash from A to B with the first to finish being declared the winner. The sport couldn’t be simpler, nor any more ancient. And yet it remains as absorbing as ever, with every race an intriguing puzzle – this week’s selection is Burdett Road at a large each-way price at Goodwood.

Yet even horseracing’s enduring (and endearing) simplicity is no barrier to the wave of AI technology that is currently breaking over the workplace. Only last week I received a speculative e-mail from a prospective supplier which was clearly drafted by ChatGPT or one of her cousins. The sender claimed a huge amount of knowledge about our business, scraped entirely from a variety of sources on the internet, including our very own website.

While the effect of the e-mail was engaging at first (it’s flattering to read lots of positive things about your business that you hold to be true) the mirage grew and grew until the truth broke through: this wasn’t a personal communication, prepared by a potential supplier with care. It was the opposite of personal, a soothing mishmash of reassuring facts crafted by a machine with no discernment whatsoever; a globalised word product intended to sell services provided by suppliers with no human thought.

Which is why, when you read this blog, it’s not unlikely that you’ll spot a speling error or too. It’s why, when I sit down to write our annual members newsletter, I won’t be passing comment on the weather in their individual postcode or the colour of their curtains. Instead of attempting to ingratiate ourselves by pretending that we know them more intimately than we do, we will continue to communicate with our customers as humans.

And if we get the tone wrong on occasion… well at least you’ll know that we’re human and that we care about what we’re doing. Which, if it isn’t horseracing, is probably something to do with starchy snacks. Crisp anyone?