Perhaps the real danger of robots isn’t them turning on humans ala Terminator, but taking our jobs and thus putting the majority of humanity out of work.

The upside could be a redistribution of wealth in society and an age of leisure. But we’ve been promised such for decades if not centuries and so far it hasn’t exactly happened.

“As they become smarter and more widespread, autonomous machines are bound to end up making life-or-death decisions in unpredictable situations, thus assuming—or at least appearing to assume—moral agency.

…As that happens, they will be presented with ethical dilemmas. Should a drone fire on a house where a target is known to be hiding, which may also be sheltering civilians? Should a driverless car swerve to avoid pedestrians if that means hitting other vehicles or endangering its occupants? Should a robot involved in disaster recovery tell people the truth about what is happening if that risks causing a panic? Such questions have led to the emergence of the field of “machine ethics”, which aims to give machines the ability to make such choices appropriately—in other words, to tell right from wrong.”

What could possibly go wrong? Oh, right.