Wow... taking the autopilot example too literally. I suppose there is no need for me to point this out, but I'm not a pilot and have never flown anything, with

Wow... taking the autopilot example too literally. I suppose there is no need for me to point this out, but I'm not a pilot and have never flown anything, with or without autopilot. I was just using this as an example of "something going wrong with the machine" to show that there are times you would blame the pilot and times you would blame the company who built the autopilot. If autopilot is a bad example, replace it with some other autonomous machine... or pretend that we were back in the stone ages of autopilots when things could go wrong. Or, I'll make up a new example where the autopilot all of a sudden inverts the plane and then sets it right before you get a chance to turn it off therefore injuring one of the passengers. Lets not get too caught up in the specifics of autopilots and aviation laws, etc... That said, having a number of failsafe mechanisms (like the ones you described) would be a critical part of any autonomous system, especially in the early stages, which would, of course, affect who we end up blaming.