THE audience were amazed and amused in equal measure by Professor Alan Winfield's talk on artificial intelligence at the Arts Centre.

The robotics expert showed an astonished crowd cutting-edge breakthroughs in technology that sounded like something from futuristic science fiction but were very real and recent.

First, he lead us on a quick history of robotics, from machines made to manufacture, to 'ecobots' that have their own artificial digestive systems which eat flies that their fuel cells turn into energy.

Though machines are getting smarter than ever, some tasks are still a bit too complex for them to process.

In one test demonstration, we watched a robot notice a test subject walking into danger and push it out of harm's way.

But when the test was done with two subjects, the 'bot noticed the second subject while saving the first, got confused, then ran off, leaving both to their fates.

Alan said, to much laughter: "I made a pathologically indecisive robot - the first one to ever face an ethical dilemma."

This, the professor reassured the crowd, was one of many reasons why we were decades away from creating the sort of sentient machines that appear in films.

The subject came up again later in the Q&A, when an audience asked if robots could replace human relationships.

He answered: "Robots can care for someone but can't care about them.

"We've no idea how to make a robot have feelings but it's relatively easy to make people believe a robot has feelings.

"It's a deception, it's not a real relationship, which is dangerous if a vulnerable person is being deceived."

Alan warned about the necessity of transparency when testing this sort of advanced technology.

He added: "Ethics underpin standards which underpin regulations, all of which need to be transparent to the public.

"For example, a self-driving Uber being tested in Seattle killed a pedestrian after the company made a secret deal with a politician to test their cars in the city.

"It's criminally irresponsible to test unproven software in a real world environment with human test subjects.

"I hate the Silicon Valley credo of 'Move fast and break things', that's not how tech should be developed.

"We have to anticipate its societal impact, collaborate with that society, and fix any problems we anticipate."

He also discussed incredible technological breakthroughs in medicine, like the exo-skeletons for hands with touch sensors that turn visual patterns into real sensations, and the tiny 'kilobots' that are barely bigger than a penny and can be used to model nano-particles in preparation for cancer treatments.

The talk was presented by the Swindon Festival of Literature in association with the Swindon Philosophical Society.

Professor Winfield's book is a Very Short Introduction to Robotics.