AI Performed Surgery on a Human, Without a Human in the Room! Let That Sink In.

No, this isn’t a deleted scene from Terminator. It actually happened.

A surgical robot named Mira (short for Miniaturized In Vivo Robotic Assistant) performed an actual surgery on an actual patient at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. A human surgeon wasn’t even in the room!

The robot ran on autonomous software powered by… you guessed it! Artificial intelligence.

It was a colon resection, a procedure usually reserved for skilled human hands and a fair amount of post-op ginger ale. But this time, Mira’s AI brain made every incision and suture with surgical precision. The patient lived. The robot didn’t unionize. And somewhere, a room full of medical students wept into their anatomy flashcards.

Let me be clear: this isn't legal in most places. The FDA had to grant an emergency Investigational Device Exemption, and we’re still a long way from this being standard protocol. But this is how it begins. One day the robot’s fixing your gut, the next the medical insurance carrier is requiring that robots do 45 types of surgery because they’re better at it than humans.

The implications are massive. No burnout. No bias. No ego. No need to scrub in. If perfected, surgical AI will be faster, cheaper, and in some cases, safer than your local gifted gastroenterologist. Think about what that means for rural hospitals, battlefields, space missions, or any setting where Dr. McDreamy (for those of you old enough to remember “Grey’s Anatomy”) isn't available.

But here’s the part that really got my attention: Mira wasn’t just following code. It made decisions during the procedure. It adapted. That’s not automation. That’s cognition. This is Skynet level stuff!

This is where law, ethics, and technology are about to collide head-on. Who’s liable if Mira slips up? The software engineer? The hospital? The robot itself? (Does it get a lawyer or do you just plug into Westlaw?)

Whether you're a lawyer, a doctor, or just someone who finds the phrase “autonomous colon resection” mildly horrifying, you need to be paying attention. The AI arms race isn’t coming. It’s already in the OR.

My prediction?

Within 5 years, we’ll see fully autonomous surgical units deployed in high-risk, low-resource environments. And within 10, the legal industry will face its own emergency surgery, trying to patch together a regulatory framework for machine-made medicine.

Skynet won’t arrive with guns blazing. It will show up with a scalpel and a bedside manner.

Frederick Shelton is a Legal Agentic AI Consultant to law firms, legal MSO's and funds, on subjects which include legal AI, ABS models, MSO's and M&A. He can be reached at fs@sheltonsteele.com