This is a good point - but from a robotics point of view it is really really hard to build a butler able to open a door and turn off a cooker.  But if we make the door and the cooker &quot;smart but slaved&quot; then we can have one smart device (one you are probably reading this on) that tells everything else what to do, and those things are dumb and reliable.<p>So there are my phrases du jour - &quot;smart slaves:  reliable, dumb and listening&quot; (I can see a joke about good husbands there)