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The robots are coming, and may be about to take your livelihoods, your lovers and even your lives.

Assassination drones, intelligent cyber attacks and ultra-realistic humanoid sexbots are all predicted to be part of the unstoppable Artificial Intelligence revolution.

Only this week Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist, warned AI has the potential to wipe out thousands of UK jobs.

And today arms firm Kalashnikov unveiled Igorek, a 4.5-tonne bulletproof prototype robot which can walk and hold weapons in giant claws, at the Army 2018 Fair near Moscow.

(Image: Twentieth Century Fox)

But AI could also be a huge force for good, improving safety, healthcare and education – as well as adding £12.2trillion to the global economy by 2030.

Prof Max Tegmark, author of book Life 3.0, is trying to ensure humans and robots coexist peacefully as head of The Future of Life Institute, set up with £7.8million from space pioneer Elon Musk.

Here, he answers the most pressing questions on AI.

Will robots take our jobs?

They are already doing so. AI enables machines to do an ever-broader range of jobs. There is a growing body of research to suggest that information technology is a key cause of the world’s growing wealth inequality.

We are building machines that replace the human brain, forcing people in to jobs which pay less. This is why we are seeing a lot of people getting poorer. There is bitterness, anger and frustration.

Then people vote for things that promise radical change, like President Donald Trump and Brexit.

The pain is real and technology is driving it. If we don’t pay attention to this, it will get more extreme.

(Image: Getty)

But there is a huge opportunity because AI can produce masses of goods and services and there is a way to share this so everyone gets better off. It requires a strong positive vision similar to that at the end of the Second World War.

Investment was made in public healthcare, public education, transport and services that helped everyone become better off. Now is the time to be even bolder and shift things in this direction.

What jobs can’t they do?

They are not yet good at unstructured jobs where you have to improvise a lot.

Jobs where you need a lot of creativity are safe, as are jobs where customers value human interaction. Psychologists, masseuses and clergy are safe.

But people should be wary of repetitive and structured work. If it’s easy to explain it to a human, it’s easy to explain it to a robot. Telemarketing is a terrible choice, it will be replaced in no time.

How can I tell if a sales call is from a real person?

You can’t. Google unveiled its Duplex assistant recently and released a video of it calling a hair salon to book an appointment.

The conversation between the programme and the human was almost indistinguishable from that between two humans. The law should require organisations to alert people they are talking to an AI.

Will sexbots ever take the place of humans?

Despite all the talk about sexbots, statistics show that teenagers today are having less sex since smart phones became so popular. You go in a restaurant and there are nice-looking young couples on their phones instead of gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes and thinking about what they want to do when they get home.

(Image: ITV)

Could AI sort out Brexit?

One big breakthrough has been AI that can learn strategy games.

It shows the power of deep learning, where AI becomes better than the person who created it, like kids become better than their parents.

There are so many applications. The stock market is a strategy game. This is a profound development that will have unimaginable applications.

Could robots go rogue and take over the planet?

There is a drive to start treating lethal autonomous weapons in the same way as biological weapons.

Slaughterbots can identify who to kill automatically without a human in the loop. Many firms and organisations have pledged not to work on this technology but it exists – it just needs to be miniaturised and mass produced.

Little armed drones will be programmed with a photo and an address and fly off, kill their target and self-destruct. They will cost a few hundred quid and be the perfect anonymous assassin.

(Image: Daily Post Wales)

It’s incredibly naive for any government to believe producing them will help it more than it will help terrorists and criminals.

The good news is that criminals don’t have the technical wherewithal to produce them – but if the UK, US or Russia does then China and North Korea will. Before long they will be on the black market everywhere.

They will be the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow.

What are the positives?

There are many. For example, human error causes at least 90% of road accidents and we are on the verge of dramatically reducing this with self-driving cars. Auto-braking is a form of AI that has already saved lives.

We will save about 10 times more lives in healthcare than we will on the roads. It is shocking how many deaths occur through data errors such as mixed up medical records. Sadly, the main reason it’s not happening faster is because people are too afraid of privacy and data breaches, despite good security protocols. Instead they should be afraid of their loved ones dying because the doctor didn’t have the right information.

(Image: Reuters)

Is there an off switch?

Not that I can see. There has been relentless, steady progress in developing AI and it is speeding up. There is so much more investment in it and the sector is attracting more and more talent.

If people just think about a skull-stomping Terminator robot whenever AI is mentioned, they get paralysed with fear.

But humans have always been limited by their own intelligence and now have the opportunity to amplify it, solve huge problems and create a truly inspiring future.

The more we think about the type of future we want, the more likely we are to get to it.