Science fiction often gives AI and intelligent robots human-like characteristics, and friendships and even romantic relationships with advanced machines have been widely described in movies, books and TV shows. How do these depictions compare with current scientific research into what might be possible in the future?

Join us for this live online Imperial Lates discussion, where Professor Murray Shanahan, cognitive robotics researcher at Imperial and Google DeepMind, and scientific consultant on the British Sci-fi film Ex Machina, will be joined by science fiction authors Aifric Campbell and Anita Chandran. Together they will explore whether advances in AI and robots could ever result in human-machine companionship.