This image released by Columbia Pictures shows Dev Patel in a scene from "Chappie." (AP Photo/Columbia Pictures, Stephanie Blomkamp)

Stephanie Blomkamp, AP

The funeral scene played like something out of science fiction.

The bodies, once new and clean and unmarked by the passage of time, were laid out on the temple altar, adorned with tags denoting their family lineage. A Buddhist priest prayed over the bodies as loved ones looked on.

The dead weren't children or relatives, but to the elderly mourners assembled for the mass funeral earlier this year in the Kofuku-ji temple near Chiba, Japan, the 19 bodies being blessed were family. The "dead" were once Aibo (the Japanese word for "companion") robot dogs created by Sony that are wildly popular in Japan. The dogs are especially beloved among the country's seniors, who make up 25 percent of Japan's population.

It's a tableau for how attached society has and will continue to be intertwined with objects built with artificial intelligence a theme that's been sci-fi fodder for decades, from Jules Verne to Ridley Scotts Blade Runner to this years new release, Chappie, the story of a lovable robot that essentially becomes human in a world that debates the consequences of his existence.

To author and filmmaker James Barrat, the fact that robot dogs are laid to rest is a sign of society's problematic and increasingly personal relationship with artificial intelligence.

As humans, we anthropomorphize things, and thats incredibly dangerous when dealing with artificial intelligence, Barrat said. We think that because they can talk to us, they have all the machinery we do behind our eyes. They never will. And we have to be wary of our own desire to make them just like us.

As more artificial intelligence works its way into everyday life from Google to Siri problems with the technology have raised concerns about the future of human control over artificial intelligence. In January, technology moguls and leaders like Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk attended the Future of Life Institutes A.I. conference with a plea to change A.I. research priorities to include safety measures as the technology develops and potentially overtakes human comprehension.

Barrat hopes more sci-fi films will spark a serious conversation about the risks of A.I.

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Film ponders future of humans in a world run on artificial intelligence