Ironically, if Pal’s creator had spent more time in front of a screen, he’d have known better. The movies have been warning us for more than half a century that artificial intelligence has an incurable habit of turning against us, especially if it hasn’t got a body of its own. From Kubrick’s 2001 and Colossus: The Forbin Project, the idea has virally passed down through the likes of War Games, Terminator’s Skynet, the Matrix’s machines and Avengers’ Ultron. At best you’ll get a morose onboard computer such as Moon’s GERTY or an artificial lover like Scarlett Johansson in Her.