Someday the robots will rise up and kill us all. They'll record our lives, obliterate our privacy, set off nuclear war, and eventually turn on us and eat our brains. If any of this ever did happen, it would serve us right. We, at least American consumers, don't deserve the future that robots really have to offer.

Recent evidence abounds. What's more appalling—a television commercial depicting an industrial automotive robot committing suicide or the public outcry that followed? We have a robot psychiatrist (more on her later) and an entire country—South Korea, not the U.S. (for now)—committed to the "ethical treatment" of robots.

Talk about putting the cart before the horse.