What we are trying to do in the next generation is essentially to find out what are the right questions to ask. I think that people who are worried about robots taking over the world should go to a robotics conference and watch these things try to walk. They fall over, bump into walls and end up with their legs thrashing or wheels spinning in the air. I'm told that in this summer's Robotic Football competition, the losing player scored all five goals - 2 against the opposing robot, and 3 against himself. The winner presumably just fell over.
Robots are more helpless than threatening.
They are really quite sweet. I was in the MIT robotics laboratory once looking at Cog , Rodney Brooks' latest robot. Poor Cog has no legs. He is a sort of humanoid, a torso stuck on a stand with arms, grippers, binocular vision and so on. But it was Sunday afternoon and no one was going to come and play with him.