Autonomous Robot Intentionally Hurts People To Make Them Bleed (fastcompany.com)

Asimove's first law of robotics has been broken, writes an anonymous reader, sharing this article from Fast Company: A Berkeley, California man wants to start a robust conversation among ethicists, philosophers, lawyers, and others about where technology is going -- and what dangers robots will present humanity in the future. Alexander Reben, a roboticist and artist, has built a tabletop robot whose sole mechanical purpose is to hurt people... The harm caused by Reben's robot is nothing more than a pinprick, albeit one delivered at high speed, causing the maximum amount of pain a small needle can inflict on a fingertip.
Though the pinpricks are delivered randomly, "[O]nce something exists in the world, you have to confront it. It becomes more urgent," says the robot's creator. "You can't just pontificate about it.... " But the article raises an interesting question. Is he responsible for the pain which his robot inflicts?

Comments

Different answer if that weren't the intent

[darkonc]

Is a gun responsible for a shooting? If I build a Rube-Goldberg machine to drop a rock on your head, is the machine responsible?

In this case, doing harm was the intent of the machine and/or it's programming. As such, the maker is clearly responsible. If the harm was unintended/unexpected and there were no clear negligence, then I'd have a completely different conversation on this.

Things get more difficult as you get further away from the original source, but -- generally speaking -- if the result is generally what you intended from an action (or series of actions), then it's pretty clear that you're responsible. This is even true where there is a human intermediary. If I pay a hitman to kill my ex wife, I can still be arrested for first degree murder -- even if he kills the wrong person by mistake.

Re:Different answer if that weren't the intent

[Anonymous Coward]

The law says both what actually happened and what your intention was matters, but the two don't necessarily have to be connected which is interesting.

A fun example is a train guard who was imprisoned in the UK for manslaughter

A woman died. That's what actually happened. And the train guard fell short of the required standard for seeing the train safely away, that's his intent. Seems simple, and in law it is.

But, the reality is that she was doomed by her actions, a guard correctly obeying all the rules could still have dispatched that train, and she'd have still run up and leaned against it drunkenly and then fallen underneath. If the guard had done his job correctly she'd still be dead, but he'd be blameless. Only the coincidence of him doing it wrong AND her dying caused him to go to jail.