While modern society does have both a litigious issue and a cowboy mentality issue, I think the consistent focus on accountability-by-lawsuit is mainly denial.

While modern society does have both a litigious issue and a cowboy mentality issue, I think the consistent focus on accountability-by-lawsuit is mainly denial. I'm selling that short, it is more involved. But take the average person off the street and say "we are going to make something using science, and that thing will do things so you don't have to." Do they think about things like "what happens to the world if routine tasks are universally cheap?" About how this would impact their life in a fundamental way? They sure do! And the brain connects this to primal fears of the unknown, the anti science culture we've had since the atomic bomb, and just an inability to fit this within their schema. The brain shuts down these dangerous thoughts and focuses on "what can go wrong? ". After all, if it is wrong, then there is no point in thinking about those uncomfortable issues. So we bounce between "who do we sue?" and "could it turn on us?", both of which fit in nicely with our preexisting schema. Irresponsible scientist meets impractical pipe dream. Both are legit issues, but so are plenty of issues being ignored. People aren't consciously doing this, but it's happening all the same. People aren't even asking these questions to find solutions. You can tell by seeing how often ot how deeply they've considered it. Usually the immediate response will be some disaster scenario (e.g. car plows into kids for no good reason) but they have no parameters, no follow up. The brain found the question so that it could check off the box saying "don't need to think about that". This may sound like I'm being elitist, but this sort of thing is but into humanity. Overcoming it in one area doesn't help you with others. My theory is that we're only actually conscious a very little bit of time, and the conscious minds natural goal is to figure out how to turn back off. That we are evolutionarily moved to keep this high caloric activity to a minimum. Brain says "we have a thing the lizard brain doesn't have any existing reflexes for, turn on self awareness! Activate backfill rationalization! " And we are aware, do a projection of "what if"s, provide expectations to the lizard brain to start new 'mindless responses, and then the need for awareness is over and we slip back into zombie mode. That's just my theory, but it applies to all of us. Some more or less than others, but to everyone. A lot.