Scientists in South Korea have drawn up a document called the Robotic Ethics Charter to deal with potential problems between humans and robots.

So far, so sci-fi, but last year the government predicted that within 50 -years robots will need legal rights. This sounds like utter rubbish to me, but then I haven’t got a fully developed hyper-intelligent android living in my basement. It’s creepy to think that within my lifetime we could be living in a society of robots and humans. L

With all the hoo-hah over providing houses and services for EU immigrants, imagine the chaos when we have to provide for an artificially created race.

As an ordinary citizen (i.e. not a scientist) trying to second-guess how technology will develop is nearly impossible – how can you predict the influence of something that you don’t even know exists yet?

I can’t believe that by the ripe old age of 25, I’m already harping on about how we had no internet or mobile phones when I was a teenager. There were no chatrooms, social networking sites or music downloads – just good old fashioned hanging around and loitering.

Maybe by 2057 there will be a technological revolution on par with the internet, which will change how we live by such a degree that disgruntled robots will be the least of our worries.