An expert has issued a warning that there is a 50 per cent chance that AI could wipe out the human race.
Professor Max Tegmark, a physicist and AI expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, supports his chilling prediction by explaining that the Earth's smartest species - humans - are responsible for the extinction of 'lesser' beings.
Therefore, when AI becomes smarter than humans the same fate could easily happen to us.
Even more terrifyingly, humans will not know when their demise will occur as it is impossible for a less intelligent species to have a chance of finding out.
Speaking to broadcaster SVT in his native Sweden, Professor Tegmark said: "About half of the other species on earth have already been exterminated by us humans.
"Because we were smarter, they had no control.
"What we are warning about now is that if we humans lose control over our society to machines that are much smarter than us, then things can go just as bad for us."