The Detail: Artificial intelligence: Will the robots revolt?

It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but how worried should we be about artificial intelligence systems running rogue and potentially turning against us? All of these are at least 20 years old, with the latter being written approximately 3000 years ago, so if you've not caught up on them yet, you've only yourself to blame.) In the 1999 film The Matrix, which is set in the near future, the human race - worried by the increasing sentience and potential villainy of the artificial intelligence (AI) machines it's created - makes the decision to scorch the sky. They reason that without an energy source as abundant as the sun, the machines - which rely on solar power - will be crippled. "The human body generates more bioelectricity than a 120-volt battery, and over 25,000 BTUs of body heat," says one of the film's main characters, Lawrence Fishburne's Morpheus, in a voiceover.