New research from a United Kingdom team will help robots and artificial intelligence (AI) realize their limits. The project seeks to ensure that autonomous robots built in the future will be safer, allowing for ethical decisions that follow legislation on robotics.

The rise of AI is an issue that has most people on two different sides.

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On one hand, people are excited about AI's capability to assist humanity with their tasks and work. The other side views the phenomenon as something akin to scenario in the movie, Terminator.

In the film, an AI called Skynet rules the world and the present and future (depending on what film you are watching) is in jeopardy from these robots.

The fear of AI stems from the fact their intellect encompasses massive amounts of data. What if the AI begins to think for itself and sees humanity as a risk to itself?

This is exactly why researchers from UK looked into developing formal verification techniques for tackling questions of safety, ethics, legality, and reliability across a range of autonomous systems, explains Professor Michael Fischer, principal investigator at Liverpool.

Professor Sandor Veres of Sheffield Robotics says their steps are necessary because robots are needed to make difficult decisions. They must be able to manage complicated situations much like humans.

The researchers come from the universities of Sheffield, Liverpool, and the West of England.

Fischer says each of the institutions will make a distinctive contribution to the project. Liverpool's focus, for instance, is the development and extension of the leading formal verification techniques and tools.

"These provide strong mathematical proof about the decisions the systems will make and so allow us, in collaboration with Sheffield and UWE, to apply these techniques across a broad variety of complex autonomous systems," he said.

TagsAI, Robots, Skynet, Terminator