I think the theory is that an artificial intelligence will become so advanced at hacking that any kind of robot you built would come under ai command and control. especially as interconnected things are now.

Yeah, that's a good point. Of course, I was picturing an autonomous robot as not being internet connected and generally having AI that comes down to 'destroy anything that moves' without any way to change it (maybe the entire hard drive in the thing is read only).

It'd be significantly harder to hack if there was no way to change how it works without opening the thing up with a screwdriver.

Then again, I'm not sure how attractive something so primitive would be in a society where internet connected systems with learning possibilities would be touted as the next big thing. I mean, I'd also say most internet of things devices could also be made much harder to hack if they didn't ever 'phone home' and were maintained entirely locally, but the market doesn't seem to be doing that.