In the last several months, top tech heavyweights including Bill Gates and Elon Musk and renowned physicist Stephen Hawking warned of threats artificial intelligence (AI) could pose. Along with a collection of intellectuals who signed a Future of Life Institute letter in January, the three leading innovators support development of AI to benefit society, but are wary of the potential dangers.

"They said this is one of the largest existential threats facing humanity. They worry that you're going to have robots that are more intelligent than humans, that will have their own volition and that will have hugely negative effects on society," CBS News contributor and NewYorker.com editor Nicholas Thompson said Monday on "CBS This Morning."

Robots like HAL in "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Chappie from the recently released sci-fi film of the same name, employ their underestimated sentient capabilities to cause problems for their human counterparts -- Hollywood fantasies spurring real-life concerns.

"The larger, long-term concern is that humanity will be shunted aside and that's what people think about, but they can't really conceptualize and can't really see exactly what's happening, but that's where angst comes from," Thompson said.

Robots outside the big screen are not yet as sophisticated, but engineers are making big strides.

Boston Dynamics developed a velociraptor-inspired robot that outran Usain Bolt; a 6-foot 2-inch, 330-pound humanoid named ATLAS; and a "cheetah" robot that uses less power than a microwave.

Engineers at DeepMind, a British start-up acquired by Google, recently pitted its creation in an Atari-style battle of the minds against a human competitor -- and won.

"It can't master Halo, but it can do the earlier video games," Thompson said.

While the computer's game-playing success came from self-taught techniques, Demis Hassabis, AI intelligence researcher at DeepMind, said at a news conference in February: "We are decades away from any technology we need to worry about."

Thompson would agree.

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Is artificial intelligence threat looming?