Search Search The rise of artificial intelligence risks making us all redundant AI systems are being designed for supermarkets which allow customers to choose their shopping and exit without going to a checkout.
 Soon, robots will be stacking the shelves and running the entire show.
 No wonder unions are worried Click to follow Independent Voices Engineers in South Korea test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 AFP At the start of a new year, what is there to look forward to?
 According to predictions from think tanks and tech experts, advances in automation and artificial intelligence will threaten the jobs of millions of workers.
 The CEO of one company, Capgemini, goes further, predicting that AI will be one of the key factors dividing society into the haves and have-nots, with highly skilled engineers at the one end of the spectrum and low-paid unqualified worker drones at the other, with nothing in between.
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 We don’t see Jarvis, voiced by Morgan Freeman, but the message is absolutely plain: this is not a bit of fun, but the unveiling of a plan for our future, a future which tech companies are battling to capitalise on.
 Stephen Hawking has a terrifying warning about artificial intelligence Zuckerberg has spent more than 100 hours programming Jarvis so that it can switch on his household gadgets, his music system and even help his small daughter learn Mandarin.
 It responds to voice commands issued from a phone, even offering him a clean grey T-shirt in the morning.
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 And, if driverless cars are easily identifiable, will they spawn a new kind of road rage – one directed at trying to provoke a response from the robots taking over our lives?
 In pictures: Artificial intelligence through history In pictures: Artificial intelligence through history Boston Dynamics describes itself as 'building dynamic robots and software for human simulation'.
 It has created robots for DARPA, the US' military research company Google has been using similar technology to build self-driving cars, and has been pushing for legislation to allow them on the roads The DARPA Urban Challenge, set up by the US Department of Defense, challenges driverless cars to navigate a 60 mile course in an urban environment that simulates guerilla warfare Deep Blue, a computer created by IBM, won a match against world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.
 The computer could evaluate 200 million positions per second, and Kasparov accused it of cheating after the match was finished Another computer created by IBM, Watson, beat two champions of US TV series Jeopardy at their own game in 2011 Apple's virtual assistant for iPhone, Siri, uses artificial intelligence technology to anticipate users' needs and give cheeky reactions Xbox's Kinect uses artificial intelligence to predict where players are likely to go, an track their movement more accurately Fans of AI say driverless cars will reduce deaths on the roads, and represent the biggest change in our lives since motor cars replaced horses a century ago.
 Really?