Humans have long been obsessed with the idea of machines being able to self-replicate and a number of experts believe they will play an important part in shaping how Earth is in the future.
One artificial intelligence engineer believes that robots could have sex with each other to evolve and produce superior offspring and this scary new world could be closer than we might imagine.
Another cybernetics expert told MailOnline that mating robots could exist in just 20 to 30 years while another robotics authority suggested that machines could print off their offspring, a little like how a 3D printer works today.
George Zarkadakis, who is a novelist as well as an engineer, believes robots could have sex with each other to evolve and produce superior offspring and this scary new world could be closer than we might imagine.
Mr Zarkadakis even predicts that humans could even breed with machines to create new hybrid species.
Writing for The Telegraph, he said: ‘Perhaps cyborgs of the future may involve human participation in robot sexual reproduction and the creation of new, hybrid species.’
Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at Sheffield University, however, thinks the future could be simpler and not as 'hands on'.
While he believes that the future of artificial intelligence could be silicon and carbon-based, with digital brains in charge of organic molecular structures, he told MailOnline that robots would probably print off their offspring, much like a 3D printer can currently be used today.
He believes the robots might not be particularly intelligent and could be 'bred' by swapping software so that the code used to create robots that are particularly good at a certain task, can be combined to produce a superior offspring, which they would print out and possibly assemble.
If robots were able to mate with each other, Mr Zarkadakis believes that sex would defend them from computer viruses, just as sex between humans defends us against parasitical attacks.
Mr Zarkadakis also said that sexual activity between robots would make them more robust and accelerate their evolution so that new machines could develop faster to suit life on Earth in the future.
Professor Kevin Warwick from the Institution of Engineering and Technology told MailOnline that robots are already good at producing new robots, which are often better than themselves.
Machines breeding with each other - mixing genetically and technologically - could ensure that their ‘good bits’ come together.
This evolution could happen much faster than with humans, as multiple machines could breed together to produce a ‘super’ offspring and there is no need to wait for their ‘children’ to grow up before they could reproduce.
Professor Warwick, who works at the University of Reading, said that ‘just about anything is possible’ and that there are already robots with biological brains that mix biological and technological parts.
‘This is not science fiction,’ he said.
He believes that robots capable of breeding with each other could be produced using current research and technologies but it will likely take 20 to 30 years before they could be used on Earth – and there are questions to be asked about whether this is a good idea.
As to whether humans could have sex with robots, he said it is not out of the question but it is 'scary' and currently 'a sci-fi scenario'.
However, he thinks that small steps will be taken in that direction.
Currently a lot of people have technology inside them, so research into a human/robot hybrid could had the scope to help a lot of humans.
Such research could be used to give people extra abilities and help scientists understand a lot more about the human body, such as how Alzheimer’s disease takes hold of the brain, he said.
But research into creating cyborgs as a result of ‘breeding’ with robots, and creating robots that breed with each other, depends on social acceptance, Professor Warwick said.
‘Over the next 20 to 30 years the question will be on the table and we have to face ethical issues.’
‘This technology is not just science fiction – we have to start thinking about it and the ethical and social consequences,’ he said.
While research could help humans, Professor Warwick warned that if a robot can self-replicate, evolve and improve more rapidly than humans, we really could end up in a nightmare future scenario.
‘Why bother with humans then?’ he asked, adding, ‘Do we want to get to that point?’
The idea of self-replicating robots has been popular in sci-fi, from William Paley’s thoughts about machines producing other machines in 1802, to the popular Matrix films.
Self-replicating machines have been around since the 1940s when mathematician John von Neumann showed how a ‘universal constructor’ machine could replicate itself.
Scientists today are working on create self-replicating machines and physicist George Dyson thinks they could be used to cut and move ice from Saturn’s moon Enceladus to Mars, where it could be used as a building material.
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