Be careful what you tell your robot to do, expert warns

While some worry that robots may become our adversaries, Daniel Weld, professor of computer science at the University of Washington, sees them as incredibly beneficial helpers. Self-driving cars, for example, might help prevent 1.3 million road deaths each year. Medical robots might avoid the 250,000 annual deaths from human errors in treatment. But there is work still to be done to make that happen, Weld said in a lecture, "Computational Ethics for AI," March 20. He was a guest lecturer in the series "The Emergence of Intelligent Machines: Challenges and Opportunities." "AIs won't wake up and want to kill us," he said, "but they might hurt us by accident."