Jim Al-Khalili, the incoming president of the British Science Association and professor of physics and public engagement at the University of Surrey, U.K., told The Telegraph the looming dangers of AI trump those posed even by climate change, antibiotic resistance, world poverty, the threat of pandemics or terrorism.

Citing Russian cyber hackers meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, he argued little would stop "cyber terrorists" from forcing their way into AI-controlled infrastructure, such as power grids, transport networks, and military installations.

"I am certain the most important conversation we should be having is about the future of AI," he said. "It will dominate what happens with all of these other issues for better or for worse."

Fears that the rise of automation and AI, known as Fourth Industrial Revolution, will endanger jobs is also warranted, he said. His concerns are mirrored by a November 2017 report by the management consulting firm McKinsey, which estimated 50 percent of current work could be automated as soon as 2030.

Al-Khalili is the latest expert to warn against the unregulated rise of AI. In April, a report by the research organization Rand Corporation concluded advances in technology and AI could see humanity speeding towards an international nuclear war.

This rise of such technology could create a dangerous cycle where governments feel obliged to update their nuclear arsenal, while trusting advice from AI machinery which could be flawed or tampered with.

"The fear that computers, by mistake or malice, might lead humanity to the brink of nuclear annihilation has haunted imaginations since the earliest days of the Cold War," the report read.

"The danger might soon be more science than fiction. Stunning advances in AI have created machines that can learn and think, provoking a new arms race among the world's major nuclear powers. It's not the killer robots of Hollywood blockbusters that we need to worry about; it's how computers might challenge the basic rules of nuclear deterrence and lead humans into making devastating decisions."

Similarly, venerated physicist Stephen Hawking cautioned AI could destroy civilization before he passed away earlier this year.

"Computers can, in theory, emulate human intelligence, and exceed it," he said. "Success in creating effective AI, could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don't know. So we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and side-lined, or conceivably destroyed by it."

Today AI is causing a lot of controversial discussions. A lot of tech experts believe that artificial intelligence has the potential to change the world. But at the same time, those same experts don't agree on what kind of an impact this changes will have on the average person. Many believe that people will be much better off with the help of advanced AI systems, while others think it will lead to our inevitable downfall.

The first danger is how do you stop maniacs take control of technology and wreaking havoc? Thats going to be a real problem but can and will be solved as we get to know more about these threats and our law enforcement systems continue adapting to the problem at hand.

Another problem is the long term effect AI has on our society. Let's take a second here and think what a society will look like when AI evolves and starts replacing human jobs with machines. As we keep making advances in AI we are going to replace more and more human jobs with robots doing our jobs for us. Companies are racing towards this goal already. Google or Tesla and probably every other car maker is trying to get self-driving cars to market. And who doesn't want to free up the 30 min drive to work every day? But what happens when these self-driving vehicles start replacing transportation jobs? What happens to all those jobs when Amazon replaces the FedEx delivery guy with a drone that drops of packages on your front lawn? IBM Watson is already trying to replace doctors and give much more accurate diagnosis and minimize human error. Great but what do the now unemployable doctors do?

Manufacturing has already replaced much of it humans with robots and will keep slashing human jobs as machines get better at what they do. Service industry is tough to crack, with the nuances of human behavior, but Facebook is taking a crack at this problem with a personalized assistant in "Project M". What happens when Starbucks replaces that courteous barista with a automated machine that pours the drink exactly how you will like it? What happens when the waiter of your restaurant will be replaced by computer ordering system and the chef is actually a robot cook that knows exactly how to make your dish without the cost of a human chef? Think of everyone you interact with and do business with on a day to day basis. Most if not all of them can be replaced by machines with sophisticated AI over the next few decades. What do all those unemployable humans do when whole industries start slashing their jobs en masse? In the recession of 2008 unemployment dipped to only 10%. In the Great Recession unemployment dipped to 25%. What happens when large chunks of our population have their jobs replaced by robots?

It is definitely not a pretty picture but one that we will have to face at some point in the future. And humans will survive. We may not going to be extinct in a few decades. But we will have to figure out a social structure that accommodates for such a paradigm shift in the way we live. AI will mean there is going to be enough resources or manufacturing or services as humans can consume but we are going to have to come up with a way in which all of us are supported by the machines that we build and ensure that our society doesn't drop into anarchy. This is what really scares me about AI.

But Subramanian Ramamoorthy, reader in the school of informatics at the University of Edinburgh, disagrees that AI is the biggest threat facing humanity.

He told Newsweek while the popular discourse around AI is heavily driven by major concerns, the technology could also provide benefits that will improve our day-to-day lives.

"Some obviously good applications range from prosthetic and assistive robotic devices that restore the capabilities of the disabled, to predictive models that stabilize and reduce congestion in energy and traffic networks," he said.

"Closer to home for me, technologies like self-driving cars have the potential to fundamentally change how our cities look and feel for most of us—positively influencing congestion, accessibility and affordability of mobility. Such machines are powered by AI."