Machine intelligence is predicted to exceed that of humans as soon as 2030. Science fiction has  given us a foretaste of what life will be like when they finally leave us behind...

Scientists believe the point of 'Singularity' – where artificial intelligence surpasses that of humans – is closer than we thought.

Logistics – the science of getting the right product to the right place at the right time – is now handled entirely by computers. Cargo containers, are what has made world trade possible: logistics software beyond a single person's comprehension runs it.

The supercomputer HECToR is the world's most powerful single machine, and will be used for all sorts of complex modelling, from climate change to financial markets. As far as we know, HECToR will only do precisely the calculations it is told to. Otherwise, it awaits instructions.

Hal, the thinking, talking computer in Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, shows all the capabilities of a human intelligence – including the ability to feel threatened, to protect territory, to disobey and kill. But to many people what made it most human-like was its reaction to impending "death".

The "replicants" in the film Blade Runner (including the one pictured played by Rutger Hauer) were almost impossible to distinguish from a human unless they took the "Voight-Kampff" test of empathy, which they were supposed to lack. But like HAL, the replicants developed that most human of characteristics: they didn't want to die.

When the robots are smarter, faster and stronger than you, what defence is left? Only your reliance on their obeying you. The movie I, Robot (based on Isaac Asimov's story collection of the same name) considers what would happen if robots failed to respect the idea that a machine should always be subservient to its creator. If the robots rebel, who or what can save us? A familiar theme, also explored in the "Terminator" films and 2001.

For now, the biggest use of robots is in factory assembly lines. Though they don't seem dangerous, industrial robots are potentially lethal because they can't detect if a human is in the way of their work. Tangle with them at your peril!

Potentially even more dangerous than an industrial robot is a machine created by Samsung, working with Korea university: a machine-gun-toting robotic sentry. Equipped with two cameras, one for day and one for infrared night vision, it has a sophisticated pattern-recognition system that can detect the difference between humans and trees. It also has a 5.5mm machine gun. You're advised not to wear camouflage clothing nearby!

In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue computer did something no other computer or human had consistently done before: it defeated the world chess champion, Garry Kasparov. But was that intelligence or "just" programming?

Judgement Day

Dharmendra Modha, head of the Cognitive Computing Group at IBM's Almaden Research Lab, is leading a "quest" to "understand and build a brain as cheaply and quickly as possible". Last year, his group succeeded in simulating a rat-scale cortical model - 55m neurons, 442bn synapses - in 8TB memory of a 32,768-processor IBM Blue Gene supercomputer. The key, he says, is not the neurons but the synapses, the electrical-chemical-electrical connections between those neurons. Biological microcircuits are roughly essentially the same in all mammals. "An individual human being is stored in the strength of the synapses."

Peter Cochrane, the former head of BT's Research Labs, says for machines to outsmart humans it "depends on almost one factor alone - the number of networked sensors. Intelligence is more to do with sensory ability than memory and computing power." The internet, he adds, overtook the capacity of a single human brain in 2006. "I reckon we're looking at the 2020 timeframe for a significant machine intelligence to emerge." And, he said: "By 2030 it really should be game over."

Intel is now looking beyond 2020 at photonics and quantum effects such as spin.

Imagine when a human-scale brain costs $1 - you could have a pocket full of them. The web will wake up, like Gaia. Nova Spivack, founder of EarthWeb and, more recently, Radar Networks (creator of Twine.com), quoted Freeman Dyson: "God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension."

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Credit article: guardian.co.uk