Elon Musk, the billionaire boss of Tesla and SpaceX, has said that humans need to become cyborgs to avoid becoming “house cats” for vastly more intelligent robots.

Musk said that as artificial intelligence advances, people will need to augment their brain power with digital technology to prevent them becoming irrelevant.

He backed the idea of a “neural lace” – a new electronic layer of the brain that would allow us to instantly access online information and greatly improve cognitive powers by tapping into artificial intelligence.