His was not the only voice warning of the dangers of AI - Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak also expressed their concerns about where the technology was heading - though Professor Hawking's was the most apocalyptic vision of a world where robots decide they don't need us any more.

What all of these prophets of AI doom wanted to do was to get the world thinking about where the science was heading - and make sure other voices joined the scientists in that debate.

That they have achieved that aim was evident on Wednesday night at an event in Cambridge marking the opening of the Centre for the Future of Intelligence, designed to do some of that thinking about the implications of AI.