Robot issues

Much of y'all's discussion of what robots should or should not do and whether that would be a good idea in society sounds more like the 1920s, when Karel Capek coined the word "robot," than like the 21st century. We long ago decided that computers, not robots, would be our default technological option to handle such chores as assembly-line work, ship navigation, checking out customers at the grocery store, etc., and we have been trusting computers to do these chores, big ones and small ones, for years. In years to come, as computers advance, the jobs we trust them to do will advance as well. The ethical decision of whether to trust computers with sensitive tasks was made (collectively) not even by your parents' generation but by your grandparents' generation, folks now in their 60s and 70s; their answer was, "Hell, yes," and y'all are stuck with the society made by that decision, because that clock isn't turning back. For example: A friend recently retired after decades as a pilot for a Major Airline. He says that for the past 10 years or so, the computers were doing almost all the flying, anyway. He was in the cockpit as a backup for the computers. If we let computers fly the trans-Atlantic route, why not let them (eventually) do brain surgery as well?

One question: Graham, why are you threatened by the prospect of a self-aware robot? Would a self-aware robot be any more dangerous than a self-aware human?