I READ recently that five per cent of the British public can imagine having a romantic relationship with an emotionally charged and intelligent robot.

They obviously have no knowledge of Arthur C Clarke’s enigmatic and prophetic book, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which, in 1968, was released as an epic film by Stanley Kubrick.

The massive space ship is controlled by what, at first, appears to be a friendly, super-intelligent, robotic computer, named HAL (Heuristic ALgorithmic). When, however, HAL makes a mistake and the two astronauts decide to shut him down, we realise he is emotional too; for he engages in a battle for survival with the humans.

The moral of this story is that, if you feel like being romantic, stick to mankind.

Malcolm Rolling, of Durham