Eric Horvitz illustrates the potential dilemmas of living with robots by telling the story of how he once got stuck in an elevator at Stanford Hospital with a droid the size of a washing machine. “I remembered thinking, ‘Whoa, this is scary,’ as it whirled around, almost knocking me down,” the Microsoft researcher recalled. “Then, I thought, ‘What if I were a patient?’ There could be big issues here.” We’re still far from the sci-fi dream of having robots whirring about and catering to our every need.
