For a long time Hollywood has warned of killer robots turning on humans - now they're a reality and the UN is worried. "Technology is a tool and it should remain a tool, but it is a dangerous tool and should be held under scrutiny. We need to try to define the elements of needful human control," he said.

"You see this [science fiction inspiration] in everything from what scientists decide to invent to what Congress and the military decides to fund," Singer said. "It shapes expectations when people think 'This is what the future is going to be, so we should invest in that today.'"

RT @LastWeekTonight: Last night's segment on drones is here for you to enjoy/be terrified

[Google] wants people never to leave the internet at all. But then there are the self-driving cars and the drones; there’s Baseline Study, a project to collect blood, saliva and urine from hundreds of anonymous volunteers to try to predict the likelihood of heart attacks and other life-threatening conditions; and Calico, a biotech subsidiary that aims – in the words of Time magazine, anyway – to “solve death”. Are these all just the hobbies of astonishingly rich men who’d like to find a way not to die (and a good place for dinner)? Or is there a masterplan? What does Google want?

These robots are our golems — utterly unpredictable, entirely unaccountable, alarmingly enabling. The horizon of war reeks of their casualties, with every blue face, every lank arm, the output of an arbitrary machine.

"Even when you don’t see them, you can hear them, you know they are there."

How killer robots became more than just scary science fiction.

In the Terminator movies, fully autonomous robots wage war against humanity. Although cyborg assassins won’t be arriving from the future anytime soon, offensive “Terminator-style” autonomous robots that are programmed to kill could soon escape Hollywood science fiction and become reality.

RT @TBIJ: Global drones wars - an excellent infographic by @AOAV using our data

"The Jetsons" gave us the dream of a robot designed to help. "The Terminator" gave us the nightmare of a machine designed to kill. The future is apparently here.