Call me Nostradamus.

In recent weeks, within my regular column concerning online matters for tax pros, I’ve alluded to fears of a future in which machines have dominion over the planet and humans are little more than the squidgy playthings of emotionless, metal despots.

Readers most likely dismissed my concerns as the ravings of a paranoid fantasist – but now they're coming true. Take that, techno-sceptics!

A new report from the Ministry of Defence has warned of an ‘incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality’ in which robotic killing-machines wage all-out war in a post-apocalypse landscape. Or something.

From this day on, Benjamin Franklin’s well-worn sardonicism about life’s inevitabilities must be amended immutably: ‘In this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death by nuclear-powered, laser-equipped cyborg and taxes’.

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