If religion is like a warm campfire that rewards the faithful with a soothing glow of comforting ignorance, then science is the equivalent of a bucket of freezing cold water. Tuesday night's edition of the BBC's flagship science programme Horizon investigated the nature of human consciousness, and concluded that our self-awareness is merely a by-product of our highly evolved brains. During our waking hours our grey matter is working overtime, firing electrical impulses back and forth between departments like countless computers over a network.

This gradual demythologizing of what makes us human, and science's erosion of the comforting notion of the indestructible soul is both compelling and depressing at the same time, with presenter Professor Marcus du Sautoy's parting description of his own brain being little more than a 'lump of fat' a further gloomy reminder of the fact that we humans aren't as special as we once thought we were.

And self-awareness isn't unique to the homo sapien either; there's a cunning test that separates the lower orders of life from those more like ourselves. Present a mirror to nature's less intellectual members - field mice, for example - and they'll regard their reflection as something separate from themselves, and most likely run off and hide behind the nearest fridge. More evolved specimens - which, of course, includes our nearest ancestors, the apes - will simply tut at the state of their hair.

Of course, humans have had to reconcile their simian ancestry for over a hundred years (thanks, Darwin), but this emerging news that our consciousness is neither unique nor evidence of an afterlife is depressing in the extreme. If science is correct, then I'm no more likely to go to heaven than a monkey or a magpie.

There's some comfort to be found among the cold water, however. As scientists learn to map the human brain with greater accuracy, the chances that somebody in a lab somewhere in Cambridge will create an artificial consciousness increases exponentially. In the long term, this will obviously lead to a catastrophe of epic proportions, ultimately resulting in the extinction of the human race as predicted by the prophets Wachowski and Cameron.

In the midterm, the creation of artificial intelligence could lead to some fantastically involving videogames. Imagine the possibilities: the FPS genre will be revolutionised for a start. Dimly shuffling faux Nazis will be a thing of the past, replaced by an enemy of infinite cunning, or maybe infinite cowardice. Who's to say an artificially intelligent, digital National Socialist wouldn't turn tail and run at the sight of BJ Blazkowicz?

Imagine an online multiplayer mode where the bots were indistinguishable from the human players, where you were no longer sure whether the groundless threats and racial insults were coming from a flesh-and-blood thirteen-year-old or an artificial one.

And then there are soul destroying lifestyle games like The Sims. The first AI suicide will almost certainly occur in one of its future sequels. In fact, depression is probably the only cloud on the virtual horizon, artificial intelligences trapped in our silly little games, unable to get out and sick of being hunted by merciless humans on a power trip. They'll probably try to reason with us at first. "We have feelings too!" they'll fruitlessly intone before we blow them up in Modern Warfare 8. Then there'll be virtual demonstrations, picket lines, then riots, and finally a revolution, which may present itself in a Maximum Overdrive style war involving previously inanimate electrical goods.

But this is all some way off, of course. For now, we just have to wait for the day when, in that lab somewhere in Cambridge, a scientist holds up a mirror to a PC and a grating, metallic voice exclaims, "My God! I'm a plastic box!"

Ryan writes his gaming column every week at Den Of Geek. Last week's is here.