It sounds like the very essence of what telephone callers most fear - dialling a company and only getting a computer.

But Scottish scientists will soon be able to program talking machines to such a level they could respond to almost any relevant query and ultimately replace the work of call centres, it was claimed yesterday.

Professor Michael Fourman, head of the School of Informatics at Edinburgh University, said the move would be one result of work to teach computers to make meaningful responses to detailed questions.

Speaking at the launch of the school's new ground-breaking centre in the city, Mr Fourman said: "One of the things we are working on is computer-generated text, taking someone's information from a database, but then being able to respond to questions.

"Generating those things by computer and making it sound human is a hard job.

"At the moment we have most of the call centres situated out in India because it costs less, but we expect to bring some of those tasks back and have them done by computers.

"What we will have of course is the people programming the computers and doing the clever stuff to make it work, which is a higher class of job to the ones we lost to India in the first place."

On show yesterday were projects such as a robot which can play Connect 4, a two-metre high robot designed for moving art installations, computer-generated haiku, and an interactive touch- sensitive table.

Yesterday's commercial opening of the new informatics facility marked the fifth anniversary of the fire in Edinburgh's Old Town which destroyed the school's original Cowgate building.

Since the blaze, work has been ongoing to create the school's "commercialisation and knowledge transfer suite"

in the refurbished Apple- ton Tower, and to build the £42m Informatics Forum research facility opposite in Potterrow.

The forum will unite researchers from five sites in one place, and is intended to act as a platform for interaction and collaboration between some 500 researchers.

The 12,000 square metre building is designed to be accessible to the public later next year.

A gallery area, known as InSpace, will feature varying exhibits chosen to demonstrate how informatics impacts in science and medicine, culture, the arts, the environment, and society.

The forum will also be home to a major bequest from the estate of sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, who died in April 2005.

The bequest includes a set of Paolozzi's Turing prints, together with four sculptures in chrome and bronze, and 100 plaster maquettes.