- Where would science fiction be without visions of super machines?

Faster, smarter and stronger than humans, and always posing a looming threat to completely wipe us out.

But it isn't just in movies.

Some tech moguls have been warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence.

That the machines we humans create could soon surpass us.

So how worried should we really be?

- Some answers can be found in the legendary and widely misunderstood battle between a supercomputer and a chess grandmaster.

- Open the pod bay doors Hal.

- [Hal] I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

- [Anchorwoman] If you had to pick our favorite fictional story about robots, the one where they wipe out humans keeps on delivering at the box office.

(gunshot) (dramatic music) - [Movie narrator] The Terminator.

- Human beings are a disease.

- Ava I said stop.

Wow wow wow - [Anchorwoman] And recently similar fears about artificial intelligence seem to be spilling into the news.

- The robot apocalypse could be closer than you think.

- [Anchorwoman] Futuristic as all this sounds, history has some insights to offer us here because even on the news, we've seen a version of this movie before.

In the 1990's the media was fixated on a real life high-stakes battle between chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov and IBM supercomputer, Deep Blue.

- Everybody billed it like this was the Terminator come to potentially take down the humans.

- [Female Narrator] IBM's 3000 pound supercomputer, which can calculate two hundred million chess positions per second.

- [Male Narrator] All the major TV networks have covered it and it's been beamed to 20 countries around the world.

- I was routing for Kasparov to kick its ass.

There's no question about it.

- [Anchorwoman] While chess grandmaster Maurice Ashley was giving live commentary on the match, Murray Campbell was routing for Deep Blue.

He helped design it.

- Chess was commonly considered to be a grand challenge for computer science.

The earliest computer scientists said if we can get a computer to play chess we've really done something.

- [Anchorwoman] And in the first round, Kasparov had the upper hand.

- [Male Narrator] He won game one versus the Deep Blue supercomputer.

(audience applauding) - [Announcer] and fantastic style.

- [Anchorwoman] But game two changed everything.

About 35 moves in, Kasparov set a trap but Deep Blue refused the bait.

Instead, the machine made a shrewder choice that paved the way to a win.

- It was stunning to see a computer play like that.

When you have a choice between an aggressive, sharp, tactical move that is concrete and specific versus a subtle positional move, that's really where the grandmaster is show.

- Those sequence of moves showed Kasparov that Deep Blue was playing at a level beyond what he had imagined it could do.

- [Anchorwoman] A shaken Kasparov resigned about 10 moves later.

In the rest of the games, Kasparov fought to a grueling series of draws.

Until in the sixth and final face off, the exhausted human champ fell apart completely.

- There was no reason for him to play chess like this.

He never plays chess like this.

- He resigned about an hour and three minutes into the game.

- I have to apologize again, I am ashamed by what I did at the end of this match.

- [Anchorwoman] Media pronouncements on the outcome's gloomy implications were swift.

- We humans are trying to figure out our next move.

- [Male Narrator] Call it a blow against humanity.

(applause) - [Male Narrator] The victory seemed to raise all those old fears of superhuman machines crushing the human spirit.

- [Anchorwoman] But computer scientists had a different reaction.

- Every time a computer does some narrow thing better than a person, there's a temptation to think that it's all over for us.

But Deep Blue doesn't play chess the way Kasparov plays chess.

Deep Blue processes information much like a bulldozer processes gravel.

- Every slice of capability that we've seen computers become really good at, and even superhuman at, are actually one small, sort of small pieces of the breadth of intelligent behaviors that we exhibit.

- [Anchorwoman] Guruduth Banavar helped build the digital descendant of Deep Blue, Watson.

It's a talking, self-teaching system.

Nimble enough to play Jeopardy.

In fact, it became very hard to beat.

- [Watson] Who is Michael Phelps?

- [Alex Trebek] Yes, Watson.

- [Watson] What is The Last Judgement?

- [Anchorwoman] So how close are machines coming to out-smarting mankind?

The people working to solve some of AI's toughest problems may be in a unique position to know.

For example, before smart machines could run amuck, they'll need to walk.

At MIT in 2016, Russ Tedrake led a team of engineers designing software for one of the most advanced humanoid robots ever built.

- The level of complexity that we can deal with is absolutely state-of-the-art and beyond.

- [Anchorwoman] And if machines are going to walk, they'll need to recognize what's infront of them.

A few years ago at Stanford, Fei-Fei Li taught computer systems to describe objects they see in pictures for the first time.

- [Computer] A man is standing next to an elephant.

A large airplane sitting on top of an airport runway.

- We're really on the quest for building machines and computers to have that kind of visual intelligence that eventually can match to humans.

Visual intelligence is about seeing objects, understanding the scene, reasoning about the visual story.

- [Anchorwoman] At MIT, Patrick Henry Winston has been programming systems to carry out the kind of basic reasoning people use to interpret stories.

- What is it that makes human intelligence different from the intelligence of something like a chimpanzee or a Neanderthal?

And for me, it's the ability to tell stories.

- [Anchorwoman] Each of these scientist's projects amounts to an engineering moonshot, in its own right.

Yet, each aims to replicate just one facet of the general intelligence humans take for granted.

And even as the technology improves, none of these researchers see a finish line in view.

- This absolutely one of those very state-of-the-art machines, but it is not capable of even some of the things that we'd expect a toddler to be able to do very effectively.

- I'm not trying to say we didn't work hard.

(laughs) And you know, we have made a lot of progress but I think important to understand we are closer to a wash machine than a Terminator.

- [Computer] A man riding a horse down a street next to a building.

A young boy is holding a baseball bat.

- The closer you come to doing research in this area, the more you realize how difficult everything is.

We don't know when those discoveries will come but they look like there's going to be many of them not just one.

- [Anchorwoman] And these scientists say it's unlikely we'll see smart machines beget vastly smarter versions of themselves overnight and totally escape human control.

That's because these AI nightmare scenarios fail to grasp the paradox that underlies much of the work in artificial intelligence.

- Things that are easy for humans are hard for computers and things that are easy for computers are hard for humans.

We underestimate all of the things that we do so easily.

- [Anchorwoman] In some ways, it comes down to common sense.

We see this problem in one of the most visible applications of AI on the street right now.

Cars owned by the Google offshoot Waymo are piloting themselves around a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona as part of a experimental driverless taxi service.

It works, in part, because Waymo cars follow hyper-detailed maps.

- Our maps have down to about 15 centimeters the location of every curb, traffic light, stop sign, driveway, and so for a car from us to appear on your block we need to have built a map of your block.

- [Anchorwoman] The question is, what happens in more chaotic situations that call for more common sense understanding on the road?

- There's the sort of negotiation which has been called the social ballet of driving.

How do you write the computer code that says always stop at red lights unless there's a man on the side of the road who's a police officer and is waving you to go through the red light?

That's a really hard thing to do.

- [Anchorwoman] Obeying a traffic cop is just one common sense task humans carry out behind the wheel and things like this remain hard for machines.

And that's why Waymos aren't likely to appear soon on your block if the conditions aren't ideal.

AI works best on problems where there's a structured environment.

While some researchers worry millions of workers could be displaced by automation others think our jobs will simply be transformed and one of the optimists on this issue may surprise you.

Garry Kasparov.

- Human plus machine isn't the future.

It's present.

As someone who fought machines and lost, I'm here to tell you this excellent, excellent news.

- [Anchorwoman] As for the question about Hollywood fears.

- I'm glad you asked that because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan.

- [Anchorwoman] Plenty of AI researchers say we're safe from those, for now.

- [Team] All right.

(clapping) - I think you can't watch this robot without thinking wow they've got a long way to go.

We like to joke his batteries only last an hour so, you know, even if he ran amuck he couldn't get very far.

(audience yelling)