Now we've all seen the movies and we know what happens in Terminator, but real life might imitate fiction as 'killer robots' are deemed to be a bigger threat to humans than the impending doom of climate change, according to an AI expert.
Leading artificial intelligence expert Dr David Levy spoke in an exclusive interview with the Daily Star Online, claiming a 'Greta Thunberg of the robot world' is needed to prevent global devastation due mainly to the rise of drones.
Speaking at a recent Raspberry Dream Labs event in London, Dr Levy told Daily Star Online: "There are all sorts of possibilities of robots behaving badly, not just because the wrong data is used or a design fault. But also because of malicious intervention by people who have the skills to hack into robots and control it.
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"There should be laws to deal with such situations but the whole process of developing laws is very slow."
He added: "I think this is a genuine fear of mine, that the speed and growth of AI is going to be so fast that it will completely outstrip the possibilities of governments to consider the laws they need to bring in to deal with a robot future. Something needs to be done, there needs to be a Greta Thunberg of the AI world."
Last year saw London Gatwick airport grind to a halt due to a drone disrupting air traffic and grounding flights on the runway, and Dr Levy believes this is just the start.
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He said: "Within a year we have this airport incident where drones close this airport and we have huge amounts of money and cause tens of thousands of passengers to miss their flights because the airport is closed.
"And that's just drones wandering around the airspace not doing very much. Imagine what will happen when terrorists get hold of a drone they can get for £200 and add to it a little resin and fly it into the middle of Trafalgar Square.
"I think governments have been far too lax in the way they are addressing or not addressing these problems."
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However, while terrorism and the threat of technology being used for less than honourable purposes remains a threat, we might still be a little way off from Skynet yet.