You've heard of Robocop, the fictional man-machine on a mission to lock human criminals away.

But experts fear the opposite will soon come true and it will be machines that end up becoming the criminals, leaving us humans powerless to stop them.

2 A screenshot from a remake of RoboCop, which features a half man, half machine crime fighter

Artificial intelligence experts have claimed that computers and robots will commit more crimes than humans by 2040.

They warned that murder machines will end up carrying the "lone wolf" terror attacks more associated with radicalised terrorists than psycho computers.

Tracey Follows, chief strategy and innovation officer at The Future Laboratory, told Raconteur: "As the workforce moves towards more automation, we could find 35 per cent of jobs now done by humans have been replaced by robots.

"Futurists have been forecasting a sharp rise in lone-wolf terror attacks for years. But once robots can be hacked to become suicide-bombing machines, lone-robot attacks could become rife too."

The robotic crime wave will be driven by the rise of artificial intelligence, which is expected to give machines a cognitive ability which could even surpass that of humans.

If the robotic crimewave seems like a distant prospect, you should consider a statistic from the National Crime Agency, which found that cyber crime made up 54 percent of total offences in 2015.

As our world becomes increasingly connected, the crimes will become more and more sophisticated, with effects in the real world and not just the virtual one.

2 Robots like this could become an increasingly common sight Credit: Array

Related Stories AI there me hearties Robot spy boat designed to hunt down terrorists takes to the River Thames Love machine Humans could be becoming addicted to mind-blowing romps with SEX ROBOTS, according to expert OUR FRIENDS ELECTRIC Sony is building a robot which can form an ’emotional connection’ with humans WHAT WILL MRS ZUCKERBERG SAY? Facebook founder has a robot butler which could make his wife VERY angry indeed Exclusive GAME OF DRONES Inside the killer robot 'arms race' where the world's superpowers are preparing for all-out futuristic war

Raj Samani, a chief technology office at Intel Security, added: "It’s only a matter of time before we see instances of people left helpless, unable to drive their cars unless they pay up a ransom.

"We’re not talking driverless cars here, just a standard modern vehicle with connectivity capabilities."

That's not all. If we begin to secure our homes using the sort of locks already on cars, it's not unrealistic to imagine a sadistic computer shutting all the doors and windows to trap the person inside.

Google engineers have even warned about the possibility of cleaning robots slaying their owners if they get in the way whilst they're tidying up.

These warnings sound like science fiction, but they could become reality much more quickly that anyone would expect.