Prototypes of these have been around for years: they first saw light of day in the movie 2001 - a space odyssey when they thought that human behavious was HAL (Harmful and Leathal). They progressed on to outlawing hanging baskets, then disallowing school snacks that had sharp corners and are currently devising bans for elderly ladies trying to purchase ice creams from fast food take aways. They have been programmed to repeat "that's banned on grounds of health and safety"! They don't need leather patches for their jackets as they are nearly always invisible, with just a vague hint of a high viz.

The T1000 Terminator would make a good H&S Officer. No Sense of humour - Check Perceives Risks - Check Terminates them - Check Maybe just a leather jacket with tweed patches?

Interesting that you have gone for the H&S professional as a cross between the manic depressive Marvin the paranoid android (who was a robot, no human parts, despite the name), the fire power of T1000, the intelligence of HAL (who though the best way forward was kill everyone) and the catchy sayings of Terminator. Makes me wonder if the future robot for the HSE would therefore be an ATM And The Government - umm - Wall-E ??? and a new Government ( Wall-E2) ( I love them really) Would IOSH allow it to become a member ?

Terminator was persistent too 'I'll be back'; a trait needed when dealing with some. I bet he could not pass a NEBOSH exam though with his very limited vocabulary? Kev- do you reckon the lifting equipment that lowered him on his final journey had been checked under LOLER?

Already happening in the legal industry for the sorting of legal documents in cases where there are acres of paperwork. Cases estimated to cost $50Million were reduced to $500,000 by use of sorting algorithms that could read emails and make "sense" of the pertinent conversations to trace who did what. Similar story here. http://www.nytimes.com/2...?pagewanted=all&_r=0 The saving grace for us is that we develop and create systems and match them to the environment, whereas discovery parts of the law only look at what is already written, it does not create. Might be room for auditing software though.