More recently, we've witnessed the encroachment of robots on the highly specialized and technical field of medicine. In 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a machine to administer the sedative propofol without the presence of an anesthesiologist. Computer-aided diagnosis, or CADx, has become a progressively important part of radiology, with a recent study by the Royal Society of Medicine showing that it outperformed radiologists in identifying radiolucency (the dark spots on an X-ray) by a factor of 10. More impressive -- because it marries finger dexterity with analytical prowess -- is the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot, or STAR, which can stitch up tubular tissue, like blood vessels, with greater accuracy than its human counterpart. There's no reason why at some point in the future computers will not be able to take over other diagnostic and surgical tasks.