Some day soon you may come home to your own robot butler. Jeeves 2.0, as it certainly won't be called, will cook, clean, do laundry and engage in light conversation on your favourite topics. One assumes he will even be able to play MP3s.

Such "utopia" has been promised since the 1960s when Arthur C Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey introduced us to HAL 9000, an intelligent computer that subsequently went on a killing spree when its human masters decided to unplug it.

Despite several false starts and more than a few damp squibs telling us Jeeves and HAL were figments of fancy, the University of Reading in the United Kingdom will tomorrow host a competition between computers that will try to pass the so-called Turing Test.

Briton Alan Turing was a mathematician and logician who said that if a human interrogator could not tell the difference between a human and a machine during questioning, then the machine could be thought of as truly intelligent.

Many thousands of man-hours and countless gallons of ink have been devoted to this subject since 1950 when Turing devised the experiment. The possibilities for application are limitless: Intelligent GPS systems that ensure you never get lost; intelligent internet search engines that will always understand what you want from the web; cars that drive themselves; voice-interaction user interfaces for office computers. And, of course, Jeeves.

Both Jeeves and I are particularly interested in another question – inspired by HAL's experience – that will arise if any contenders at the UK's Reading University meet Turing's criteria. Should machines be accorded rights?

A report published in December 2006 asked the same question. Sponsored by Sir David King, the UK government's chief scientist, the paper concentrates on a time where machines will be "conscious".

If they reach this level, they will want rights and, according to many experts, they should get them. This raises some interesting, ethical and legal points, not least that raised by the Financial Times when it said: "The next time you beat your keyboard in frustration, think of a day when it may be able to sue you for repeated assault."