The Daily Star's FREE newsletter is spectacular! Sign up today for the best stories straight to your inbox Sign up today! Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Dr Ian Pearson believes robots will be deployed criminally as assassins or used for espionage by rogue states or individuals.

But he warned such robots will be capable of changing their appearance entirely, leaving police forces unable to trace the culprit.

Dr Pearson, a futurologist, told Daily Star Online: "Problems could arise such as robots used in crimes and not identifiable.

"Because their robot appearance could easily be changed to conceal them afterwards, or used in identity fraud, or espionage by pretending to be someone else.

"Military robots obviously would be able to kill people, but only a few.

"To be an existential threat, there would need to be many millions of them that have become a threat without anyone noticing, and that seems unlikely.

(Image: GETTY)

"Although again, it assumes a modicum of intelligence in regulation."

He added: "It would be theoretically possible to do a lot of harm, but it would require a lot of oversight, good planning and good luck to pull it off."

Dr Pearson has long warned of the dangers of robots being deployed as killers, and he’s not alone.

Computer engineer, Dr Subhash Kak, said robots may be sold on the black market advertising "untraceable murders".

He told us: "The technology for human assisted killer robots is already here.

"Bad actors will be able to produce these using parts that are not too difficult to buy on the open market, or just get them on the black market.

(Image: GETTY)

(Image: GETTY)

"The possibility of untraceable terror attacks will increase."

Dr Pearson has also warned that robots could even develop their own "moral code" to turn against humans.

He said: "As AI continues to develop and as we head down the road towards consciousness – and it isn't going to be an overnight thing, but we're gradually making computers more and more sophisticated – at some point you're giving them access to moral education so they can learn morals themselves.

"You can give them reasoning capabilities and they might come up with a different moral code, which puts them on a higher pedestal than the humans they are supposed to be serving.

"They might decide themselves that, although they have been told to respect this particular moral viewpoint, actually theirs is more important and they might go off on their own direction which we might not approve of."