In James Cameron’s The Terminator, a corporation with control over Artificial Intelligence uses it to take over the world, go back in time, and eliminate those who would stand against it in the future. Humans have control of the machines, and they use them for malignant purposes.
The T-800 androids in the Terminator were disguised as human, complete with an endoskeleton grafted with human skin and tissue. Dogs were the only beings that could determine if the T-800 was human or not. One other way to tell an android apart from a human was that radio and TV reception was distorted when an android was near.
In these scenarios, though machines are doing evil things, they are being instructed to do so by the people controlling them. They cannot act on their own without being ordered to do so by some human. The likelihood of one company developing a technology that is so radically far ahead of the competition and that at the same time, would be willing to use this technology for such evil purposes is relatively unlikely. Technology is technology; everybody will have access to some of it. If one group or company races ahead of others, others wouldn't be that far behind.
An example of a modern-day, real-life Terminator is evident in the Army’s Future Combat Systems plan. This plan means to produce a family of unmanned, computerized fighting systems that will computerise and revolutionize warfare as it has never been done before. The cost of implementing this plan is astronomical, but the Army is committed to making it happen.
Computers were first designed to break enemy codes and calculate missile trajectories, but now they are being used against humans in ways, which were only deemed possible by the sci-fi writers in the past. These new computers are being used to create robot armies, which are now being tested in Baghdad. These armies are controlled by soldiers with laptops on the front-lines. They are often referred to as the Army’s Terminators though they show a greater semblance to R2-D2 from Star Wars.
Who would you trust more: G.I. Joe or A.I. Joe?
See also: The Matrix , Star Wars, Bionic Man