Researchers said machines equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) would inevitably discover that honesty doesn't always pay, based on the knowledge they pick up throughout their life.

In the future, robots will be able to learn from their experiences, potentially leaving them vulnerable to breaking the law.

If they do decide to become criminals, it will nigh on impossible to decide who to charge for the crimes they commit.

In an upcoming paper set to be published in the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law, Amitai Etzioni and Oren Etzioni used the example of driverless cars to demonstrate what could go wrong with "smart instruments" – their term for robots which have the ability to learn.