FEBRUARY 2, 2004

OKAY, this should scare the cr*p out of all you conspiracy theorists out there. It seems that DARPA, the advanced research projects agency of the American Department of Defence, has organised a robot race from Barstow to Las Vegas on March 13 and they're offering a million dollars to the winner (see darpa.mil/grandchallenge/overview.htm).

The fools! Haven't they seen The Terminator? Don't they realise this could open the doors to a cyborg takeover of the world? It even says on the website that "the purpose of the challenge is to leverage American ingenuity to accelerate the development of autonomous vehicle technologies that can be applied to military requirements".

I’m sorry, but if a seven-foot tall chrome skeleton armed with a couple of 40-watt plasma rifles isn’t an "autonomous vehicle", then I’m not yakking on in a desperate attempt to fill space.

Um… meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, the Challenge is open to pretty much anyone, although if you’re from Iraq or North Korea I wouldn’t bother applying. Oh yeah, and the closing date for applications was October last year. Anyway, the autonomous vehicles (robots from now on) have to traverse a 300-mile course from California to Nevada without human intervention, although it doesn’t say whether they have to seek out John Connor on the way.

They do have to negotiate checkpoints, control their speed and direction and negotiate terrain. Frankly, if this isn’t asking for the subjugation of the human race by robot overlords, I don’t know what is. What I do know is that I have to cut down on my sugar intake.

Check out the Q&A pages, which are full of more dire warnings for the fate of humanity. For example: "As with the challenge vehicle itself, no humans (or other living beings) may control or send commands or data to the service equipment". I’m sorry, other living beings? Is there a team from Area 51 taking part?

What’s even scarier is that I seem to be the only one who realises the dangers posed by this competition, although whether that’s more frightening for me or my therapist remains to be seen. Nurse!