Evil robots and intelligent computers gone bad have been a mainstay of the genre since the advent of the electronic age—and the stories, like the machines they are about, have only increased in sophistication. Take 1984's The Terminator, which offered filmgoers a terrifying glimpse of a future where humans are hunted by robots. Two decades further along The Sarah Connor Chronicles brings that same world to ever more detailed life on the small screen ... its dark vision realized, ironically, by a revolution in special effects powered by improvements in computer graphics.

Little surprise, then, that the Internet has spawned a blog called AI Panic, which tracks the likelihood of a takeover of the Earth by artificially intelligent machines. Following the development of everything from military robots to artificial "love" companions, the site gives each of its posts a rating that either adds to or subtracts from the overall level of AI Panic. (This level is currently sitting near a 30 percent probability of a Terminator-style Judgment Day event—too soon to really worry, according to the blog's owner, Robin Baumgarten, who consciously strives to avoid unnecessary "scaremongering.")

The posts at AI Panic fall into a number of categories. There are frivolous items—like a video of a dog trying to figure out a quadruped robot—sprinkled amid serious news articles about the electronics industry and profiles of scientists working on machine intelligence. A comparatively new blog, this site is one that promises to get more interesting as time goes on ... though possibly more worrisome, too.