It’s strange seeing bots showing up already. Our local grocery chain has robots - tall, lanky and uncoordinated - rolling around the stores with their two glowing eyes looking for spills to alert a human to come clean.

The last time I saw one, it was relentlessly circling a scuff mark near the entrance to the back stockroom. Twenty minutes later as I’m getting ready to leave, the bot was still there seemingly totally confounded by this dark and utterly harmless streak on the floor. A nearby employee stocking the shelves rolled his eyes as he told a fellow shopper of the many tens-of-thousands of dollars this machine cost.