Technically Incorrect: Releasing a list of 12 threats to human civilization, academic researchers put artificial intelligence as an emerging and powerful risk.

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.

And one day he'll have had enough of his creators. Documentary & Discovery HD Channel/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

If we're all going to die, there's something slightly exciting in the idea that the end will be unexpected.

For many, the most pulsating thought is that we'll build robots that will take a look at us one day and see us as mere detritus.

Stephen Hawking has warned of it. So has Elon Musk. Now artificial intelligence has appeared on the list of 12 Risks That Threaten Human Civilization.

Published by the Global Challenges Foundation and written by academics from Oxford University and elsewhere, the report seeks to identify risks to humanity that are, in its words, "infinite."

There, amid such well-known threats such as extreme climate change, nuclear war, major asteroid impact and nanotechnology is artificial intelligence. Yes, straight into the chart at No. 11.

The report's authors write of robots that we might create: "Such extreme intelligences could not easily be controlled (either by the groups creating them, or by some international regulatory regime), and would probably act to boost their own intelligence and acquire maximal resources for almost all initial AI motivations."

The use of "probably" is interesting. Is it logical that any artificial intelligence created would necessarily want to boost its own intelligence -- because that's what humans try to do (allegedly)?

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Boffins join Musk, Hawking in saying AI is threat to humanity