Abbie has enjoyed a brilliant start to her new job as a junior fund manager at AllianceBernstein, a $500bn investment group in New York. In her first three months she has handled thousands of bond trades worth nearly $19bn, never complaining, messing up or even taking a break. 

That’s because she is an algorithm.

AllianceBernstein’s latest robotic employee did initially have a problem understanding some of the niceties of her human bosses — at first Abbie was stumped by what they meant with the word “please” — but she already handles about 35 per cent of their bond trades. The asset manager, which is considering the relocation of its headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee, is optimistic that Abbie will soon be able to automate large parts of the work of its two dozen human assistant portfolio managers.