We write a lot about robots here at New Scientist – the latest cutting-edge developments, the newest technology. But we also have a great deal of fondness for them in fiction, whether that's the super cute likes of WALL-E and BB-8, or the darker side of the robotic family, from the Terminator to Ava from Ex Machina. Last month, Sierra Greer's novel about the rebellion of a robot designed for intimacy, Annie Bot, won this year's Arthur C Clarke award, the UK's top prize for science fiction. It was described by judges as "a tightly-focused first person account of a robot designed to be the perfect companion who struggles to become free". Greer's win felt like the right moment to ask New Scientist staff to nominate their own favourite fictional robotic beings, from page or screen. After a bit of quibbling about what constitutes a robot, and a lot of people plumping for various Star Wars droids and Futurama creations, here, in no particular order, they are.

It's been 25 years since Matt Groening's classic cartoon Futurama first aired, offering a hilarious portrayal of Earth in the 31st century. In the cult sci-fi series, New York delivery boy Fry is cryogenically frozen on New Year's Eve 1999 and wakes up 1,000 years later to a very different reality. As Fry discovers, the world is full of technological wonders, from self aware robots to high-speed transportation tubes and celebrities preserved in jars. Although many are still the stuff of fantasy, the last quarter of a century has seen a level of technological invention that the show's producers surely didn't anticipate. As a new series airs on Disney, MailOnline takes a look at Futurama gadgetry that's now a realty, from sex robots to chip implants and even suicide booths.

Meta's planning on unleashing a swarm of personality-driven AI chatbots to attract young users to its various platforms, as originally reported by The Wall Street Journal. The first of these bots could launch as early as this week, with rumors persisting that one will get announced during Meta's Connect conference on Wednesday. It looks like these bots won't be tied to a particular platform under Meta's umbrella and should launch on a variety of social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp. WSJ says that Meta employees have been testing the generative bots for a while. The bots are being released to increase chat engagement, but some may offer productivity tools like coding and the like.

The season finale of "Rick and Morty," the Internet Movie Database's fourth most-popular TV show of all-time, runs tonight. What started as a graphic parody of Back to the Future (minus the headache of time travel) is now a critically acclaimed series with a devoted fan base. It follows a prototypical mad scientist, Rick, and his grandson, Morty, on adventures in alternate universes. David Sims, of The AV Club, summed up the show's premise as "essentially--what if Doc Brown was a demented drunk? And what if Marty McFly was a lonely kid who got dragged around with him on terrifying and strange adventures through space and time?"

The mobile game Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow is now available, developer Jam City announced Thursday. The title, which will launch on both Google Android and Apple iOS, is based on the long-running animated show "Futurama." The mobile game, which was announced earlier this year, revolves around combat and intergalactic gameplay as you take the role of primary characters from the show's Planet Express delivery crew like Fry, Leela and Bender. The game also includes strategy and RPG-like mechanics as players can work to level up and train their characters to learn new in-game abilities. As with many popular mobile games, Worlds of Tomorrow will be free to play and feature microtransactions.

What does this mean for the world of recruitment and job hunting? There's a tendency to think this is all pie-in-the-sky stuff… Imagining a future where a machine decides which job you're best suited for is frankly frightening. Television shows like Futurama have done their job of reminding us why a future dictated by machine logic is probably best avoided. We understandably become uneasy with this idea because a machine does not think like a human. But what if a machine could think like a human – a more considerate version of Futurama's Bender – what then?

Imagining a future where a machine decides which job you're best suited for is frankly frightening. Television shows like Futurama have done their job of reminding us why a future dictated by machine logic is probably best avoided. We understandably become uneasy with this idea because a machine does not think like a human. But what if a machine could think like a human - a more considerate version of Futurama's Bender - what then? Machines with cognitive intelligence are no longer the realm of science fiction.