IMAGINE the scene. It’s the not-too-distant future. Scientists have continued to make strides in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics.

The result is a cyber soldier that, unlike a human, can march into battle and withstand most weaponry, a virtually invincible remote-control metal warrior.

Meanwhile, a giant corporation is also using robotics and AI to make life easier, cure illnesses and developing a new missile defence system that makes the US’s ‘Star Wars’ look primitive.

Does this ring a bell? If you’re into films it probably will . . . it’s more or less the back story to the Terminator sci fi movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a killer cyborg in part one and a friendly one in part two. Let’s pretend the other sequels just didn’t happen — it’s definitely for the best.

I mention this scenario because in the story, scientific discovery and boundary pushing did not end well for humanity. In fact, World War Three was the result. So, not well at all.

I also mention it as after there was something of a Twitterstorm (is there ever anything else on Twitter?) following a Tweet from actor Jeff Goldblum this week.

He was responding to an article (albeit one that was published some time ago and has for some reason resurfaced) which reports that scientists reckon that within the next few years they will be at the point where they have the technology to recreate dinosaurs.

At the time of the article, palaeontologist Jack Horner, who inspired Sam Neill’s character Dr Alan Grant and served as a consultant on the Jurassic Park films, claimed he would be able to bring dinosaurs back through genetic engineering using chickens, which have prehistoric genetic links to the extinct creatures.

Although dinosaur DNA is too old to have survived intact, birds are the closest living things to dinosaurs and bird DNA contains the necessary genes to build a prehistoric looking animal.

What scientists are doing with these chickens is trying to reactivate the genes that would effectively turn the walking Sunday roast into a dinosaur-like creature, with a long tail, teeth and even hands.

Goldblum, who played Dr Ian Malcolm in the Jurassic Park series, wrote this week: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should...”, one of his quotes from the original film.

I have watched enough sci-fi films involving humans meddling with forces they don’t understand to be rather wary.

Movies like Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Minority Report, Evolution, Ex Machina and Never Let Me Go are just a few of many cautionary tales about the consequences of mankind messing about with nature.

You have to wonder whether Dr Horner and his colleagues have seen Jurassic Park — T-Rexes and velociraptors soon made a meal of much of the cast as I recall.

I don’t think we need to worry about a big lizards rampaging through our back gardens just yet, but the issues around genetic experimentation are something we should probably consider.

Speaking of meddling with forces we don’t understand, it definitely beats thinking about Brexit . . .