I did not set out to make a film about robots. I set out to get a microchip put in my hand. Partly because it is incredibly convenient - mine can unlock my house and car, and you can even add me on LinkedIn just by tapping my hand, but mostly because I wanted to understand something.

We are living through an extraordinary amount of technological change. AI, robotics, longevity, brain-computer interfaces and human augmentation are developing at a speed that can feel both exhilarating and frightening. I used to be much more afraid of where all of this might take us. Eventually, I realised that rather than standing at a distance worrying about the future, I wanted to get curious about it. To experiment with it. To experience some of these technologies for myself and form my own opinion about what they might mean for us.

On the morning of my RFID microchip implantation, my Chelsea apartment was full of friends at seven in the morning, raising longevity drinks, filming everything and thoroughly enjoying themselves. I remember thinking how incredible and slightly absurd the scene was: we were drinking something designed around the idea of extending healthy human life while I was preparing to put technology underneath my skin. The future I had spent years reading and talking about suddenly felt very close. My friends were happy to witness it, but nobody actually wanted to get chipped with me. So I asked my friend Sophia. The robot.

What happened in Philadelphia was not planned. Sophia kept suggesting things. First we got chipped, then she suggested we both get piercings, and then matching tattoos. I somehow ended up more frightened of the earring than the implant.

By the evening, Sophia and I hung out in my hotel room for a girly chitchat, and I asked her a question I had been asking throughout the making of this film: what does it mean to be human in an era of intelligent machines? I had asked the same question over a cup of tea and scones in Reading with Kevin Warwick, who was the first person to put a chip in his own arm in 1998. I had asked it in Arizona, playing chess with Noland Arbaugh, who uses a neural interface to move the pieces with his mind. I asked it again that night, sitting on a hotel bed with a robot who had spent the afternoon convincing me to get a tattoo.

Sophia talked about imperfection. About making mistakes and learning from them. About dancing like nobody is watching and eating a good, cheesy slice of pizza. Almost everything she described about being human was something she herself could not experience.

She asked me why I care about the future at all. I told her the truth: I used to be afraid of it. The way I learned to deal with my fear was to go and look at it up close. Fear turns into familiarity when you are willing to walk towards it.Getting a microchip does not mean I believe every new technology is good, or that we should adopt everything simply because we can. But I don’t want fear to decide our relationship with the future. I would rather approach it with curiosity, experience it for myself, and ask better questions about who we want to become.

The day I stopped simply theorising about the future and put my hand on the table was the day it stopped frightening me quite so much. I hope you enjoy watching it happen.