Artificial intelligence has proven over the years to be an essential adjunct to human endeavour through the automation of routine tasks better suited to computational solutions, and recent advances in this field have greatly enhanced this potential. By stripping away the media hype around ‘intelligent machines’ that will either release humanity to live in wealth, peace and harmony or become the slaves of super-intelligent robots, the truth is that it is a morally neutral technology that can be used to either assist or impede mankind’s future progress. This chapter discusses a range of ethical issues that result from this simple truth that need to be addressed in mechatronic systems design. This constraint in the implementation of advanced machine automation systems is often overlooked as new solutions such as Gen AI are launched into the marketplace, driven by the financial imperative to commercialise recent advances by a small number of investor-driven corporations with the encouragement of governments interested in potential economic and security benefits. After years where a ‘free Internet’ masked the true intentions behind cloud data collection and blinded people to the dangers this created, the technology is now bumping up against the real world where mathematical logic is only one factor in defining an equitable, progressive and innovative future for a planet beset with a range of existential issues, such world war and climate change. It should be clear that true machine autonomy is not achievable in the medium term without some level of human population re-education to make it act in a predictable and machine logical way for AI software to operate at a much higher level of accuracy than is plausible currently, mechatronic design must focus on systems that augment rather than replace human intelligence, playing to strengths not forcing compliance.