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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

I don't remember if this topic has been discussed before. Anyway, I think that it is an interesting topic. There are many unanswered questions, especially, regarding liability. Would you trust a surgical robot ?

Today’s surgical robots extend the surgeon’s capacities; they filter out hand tremors and allow maneuvers that even the best surgeon couldn’t pull off with laparoscopic surgery’s typical long-handled tools (sometimes dismissively called “chopsticks”). But at the end of the day, the robot is just a fancier tool under direct human control. Dennis Fowler, executive vice president of the surgical robotics company Titan Medical [titanmedicalinc.com], is among those who think medicine will be better served if the robots become autonomous agents that make decisions and independently carry out their assigned tasks. “This is a technological intervention to add reliability and reduce errors of human fallibility,” says Fowler, who worked as a surgeon for 32 years before moving to industry.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/medical-robots/would-you-trust-a-robot-surgeon-to-operate-on-you [ieee.org]

[Related]:

Can We Trust Robots ? [ieee.org]

How to Build a Moral Robot [ieee.org]

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