When smart machines hurt people, who’s to blame?

In the near future, machines controlled by artificial intelligence will be as common as electricity and telephones are today. But what happens when these autonomous cars, robotic surgeons and thinking industrial machines make deadly mistakes? — dpa

Pretty soon machines controlled by artificial intelligence will be as common as electricity and smartphones are today. But what happens when autonomous cars, robotic surgeons and thinking industrial machines make deadly mistakes?

In a futuristic kitchen on display at a recent tech fair in Las Vegas, robot arms from a tech firm could be seen doing what we thought were exclusively human tasks – cooking a meal, making coffee, loading a dishwasher.