8. Artificial Intelligence: We’ve all seen the Terminator movies, so we know how this works: one day artificial intelligence will be smarter than humans, and when that happens the AI will quickly realise that the best way to protect the planet is to get rid of the meatbags.

According to futurist Ray Kurzweil, the singularity — the moment machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence — is due around 2045. If he’s right then we’ll probably be toast by 2050. […]