Robots. They can already clean our floors, build our cars, review legal documents, check us in at hotels and serve us drinks, but will we see them sitting around the boardroom table in place of people? Are my fellow board directors about to be made obsolete, replaced by robots overseeing companies? Will the discussion of diversity around the board table begin to include talk of non-humans?

It might sound farfetched, but 45% of 800 executives surveyed by the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Software and Society said they expected an artificial intelligence machine will sit on a company’s board of directors by the year 2025.

This isn't the first time this has come up. Last year an investment group drummed up headlines by announcing that it had appointed an AI to its board of directors. The firm said it would analyse data to help them make decisions about biotech investments. But, since that isn’t the full extent of the role of a genuine board member, the algorithm clearly was not really going to function as a full voting member of the firm’s board.