The robots are coming – but will they really take our jobs?

Last week, Chancellor Philip Hammond announced in the Autumn Budget a £500m package of investment into tech initiatives, including the development of artificial intelligence. Which must have had the Channel 4 executives ordering trebles all round, because with perfect timing they've designated this week the "Rise of the Robots season", with a schedule that includes documentaries on the take-off of artificial intelligences (AIs) as consulting doctors, a David Tennant-narrated piece on the challenge of making robots as human as possible, and the one that's had the tabloids hot under the collar, today'sThe Sex Robots Are Coming – which needs little further explanation. Doctor Who and the Invasion of the Sex-Bots aside, though, is it actually possible that the dream of science fiction writers going back a century or more is on the verge of reality? Are we really about to live in the long-promised future of robots and AIs? As they used to say on the old Six Million Dollar Man TV show (point of order – Steve Austin was a cyborg, not a robot), we have the technology… or we're about to.