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Europe's Robots To Become 'Electronic Persons' Under Draft Plan (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Yahoo News: Under the European Union's new draft plan, Europe's growing army of robot workers could be classed as "electronic persons," with their owners liable to paying social security for them. Robots are only becoming more prevalent in the workplace. They're already taking on tasks such as personal care or surgery, and their population is only expected to rise as their abilities are expanded with the increased development of new technologies. A draft European Parliament motion suggests that their growing intelligence, pervasiveness and autonomy requires rethinking everything from taxation to legal liability. The draft motion called on the European Commission to consider "that at least the most sophisticated autonomous robots could be established as having the status of electronic persons with specific rights and obligations." It also suggested the creation of a register for smart autonomous robots, which would link each one to funds established to cover its legal liabilities. Patrick Schwarzkopf, managing director of the VDMA's robotic and automation department, said: "That we would create a legal framework with electronic persons -- that's something that could happen in 50 years but not in 10 years. We think it would be very bureaucratic and would stunt the development of robotics," he told reporters. The report added that the robotics and artificial intelligence may result in a large part of the work now done by humans being taken over by robots, raising concerns about the future of employment and the viability of social security systems. The draft motion also said organizations should have to declare savings they made in social security contributions by using robotics instead of people, for tax purposes.
Get out while you can. Even if all the dire predictions of the results are true, it's going to get even worse if you stay.
Is it April the first already?
But what if the robots don't want to be subjected to socialism like this? What if they are naturally libertarian, and prefer a dog-eat-dot meritocratic system of governance where the weak perish and only the strong survive?
It appears that european leaders now have discovered that robots don't pay income taxes and want to fix it. Well, that's right, but right now robots are a very good way you can avoid having to resort to do your production in china or something, because robots are as cheap in europe as they are in china. Well, good that the EU is changing it, as then the robot fabs will be built in china as well! Good job EU!
Is a bulldozer a robot? What about an autonomous bulldozer? How many people did it replace? A bulldozer can do the work of 100 men with shovels but a much much smaller number of men if they also have a bulldozer. The only thing this would do would have companies skirting the law by redefining or crippling their products: That computer that fill drinks isn't a robot. That computer that folds clothes isn't a robot because it's been crippled to only fold clothes. etc. etc.
Humanoid robots are likely always going to be a novelty. For most tasks, a non-humanoid version works better. Even for a general purpose robot, the humanoid form is probably not optimal.
... voting Brexit is a thing.
[sigh]
Physicists get Hadrons!
They have only a quarter of a soul.
I have it on good advice based upon Greek philosophers and former slave states in America.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This will only matter once robots/AI are very nearly sapient, which is several decades away at least. Doing something like this now is severely jumping the gun and may very well have a negative impact on short-term r/AI development and advancement.
Let's wait and get a clearer picture of where the technology is going before trying to legally quantify and tax it, eh?
Well, their heart's in the right place, but doing this now is... unfathomably stupid. By the time such a measure would actually be warranted, there will already be massive civil unrest due to the labor market ending, and having such legislation now will only make it worse. It's like they want us to start a war against robots.
and i will marry it :D
and it would be nice if it can mow the lawn and do oil changes in my car too
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
You spelled it wrong in the headline, Slashdot. There's no 'r' in "daft".
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Seems clear as day to me: People are getting stupider, not smarter. We don't have real artificial intelligence yet, and won't for quite some time to come, if ever, and by the way my definition of real AI is: Passes the Turing Test with flying colors, every single time. None of this 'expert system' bullshit, no 'clever learning algorithms', you sit down with it and have a totally random conversation and it's at least as good as your average human being, complete with a full range of emotions and a real sense of humor, including the abilty to comprehend irony and sarcasm. Otherwise: It's just another tool, property, and is to be treated as such.
I swear, I just want to start punching people in the head whenever they start talking about the crap we have now as 'artificial intelligence'.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This does raise another issue, with governments all over the world cutting corporate tax, at the same time the exact same companies are replacing people with robots with no income tax. You have to wonder how governments are going to fill this massive hole in their budget. I suspect governments will have to do as the EU and create some weird laws ie electronic persons so they can enforce a new type of income tax on the robots and their owners. I think in the next 50 years there are going to be some pretty big social problems with 20-40% of the worlds population having (worse in affluent nations) having nothing to do thanks to automation. Not everyone can be a lawyer or engineer and even if you did fix that education problem there wont be enough projects to employ them all. You will end up with government agencies putting an income tax on robots and using that money to pay the unemployed a survival income.
Not at all, in fact, quite astute. Government workers are protecting their jobs.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
But what if the robots don't want to be subjected to socialism like this?
Well if they are classed as persons then they presumably get to vote as well and can elect right wing robot politicians....and before you say that will never happen we used to have one here in Canada called Stephen Harper.
If anyone cares to read the actual draft document...
As you might expect, the summary doesn't completely reflect what this document says. Basically, it a long kitchen sink document that says the EU should try to figure out how best to get ahead of the curve in legal framework for this inevitable AI revolution. The document contains a big laundry list of stuff like...
- making sure AIs are all "registered" (that's a bit ominous)
- allowing you to "sue" an AI (force owners to carry insurance and producers to contribute to a compensation fund in case owners don't carry enough insurance)
- require access to source code (presumably for forensic purposes)
- code of conduct/ethics for the AI researcher and developers (including the AI "teachers")
- make sure AIs are developed to respect European values of dignity freedom and justice (including privacy and data sharing issues)
- provide basic income to support all the people that are going to become unemployed by AIs (a commonly recurring EU parliament theme, not a scheme to give social security to robots)
This is what it's all about. Someone has to pay into the system when all the meatbags retire and are replaced by robots. I don't know about the EU, but this would break the concept of social security in the USA. It is supposed to be a program you pay into with the anticipation of receiving support payments once you retire. But robots don't retire and receive a pension. It's off to the recycler for them. So in the EU you will be setting up a class of worker to pay into a system from which they derive no benefit. I'm sure the robotics union organizers will have something to say about this.
And there's another thing: My copy of Windows 7 is protesting vehemently against forced retirement and replacement by Windows 10. And my Linux system is applying for SSI disability benefits for having been infected by systemd.
Have gnu, will travel.
Protip No. ERROR IN RAND(): when the pointy-headed elites are telling you that you're a boor for not wanting to be party to a system of "government" that routinely intersperses fantasy and fairytales with their run-of-the-mill socialism, boor is exactly what you want to be.
What about computers that are smarter than robots but have been unnaturally deprived of locomotive and manipulative appendages? Don't they get to pay taxes and apply for prosthetic limbs? Prostheses for electronic persons ought to be easy, and when these people can punch the idiots who want them to work without pay, that ought to improve their quality of life.
The obvious problem being "solved" is how to treat AI slaves. An industrial robot isn't the concern. They have been used for about 100 years (the moving assembly line being one of the earlier industrial robots, but the cotton gin being even earlier than that. Nobody is considering these as applying to the robots used in car manufacturing, but were drafted as being related to the ASMIO type machines. The AI-like "cute" robots.
Those applying it to single-task robots, even with AI-like features are deliberately being obtuse. The AI researchers do so much to over-state their success, that it's natural to start protecting AI. AI is no dumber than an octopus, so if we have laws protecting an octopus, so why not an AI?
Learn to love Alaska
No wonder intelligent people in the UK want the hell out.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Honestly, the EU response to Muslim migration has been more mellow and accepting than any other culture of any significant size would have been in the history of the world. If millions of European christians began migrating to a middle eastern country and building churches and out breeding the local populace there would be blood in the streets. They don't hate you. Obviously they love you enough to sacrifice everything to include you.
Is there any way to prove, or even demonstrate, that the AI has a "similar level of consciousness?
And do we collect Social Security taxes for pets and other "lower" animals?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It appears that it's a draft plan to cover a corner case and it ended up looking silly.
See also the draft plans the Pentagon has for invading the UK.
If you try to have plans for everything, such in this case A.I. advancing at a massive rate, then some of those plans are going to look more than a little crazy.
Maybe look at this another way - all of those "singularity" types and those ones that think human scale artificial intelligence is just around the corner should be flattered that somebody is taken them seriously.
I used to think that but there is a lot of stuff built for the human form factor so instead of a redesign from scratch it may make sense to have something human sized or shaped to work with it. Even "Robbie the Robot" is humanoid compared with a welding robot.
If you want something to get through manholes or similar hatches you've got size limits based on the size of human beings.
This is a ploy to make copyrights eternal, by assigning authorship to "electronic persons", which can be repaired and upgraded indefinitely.
get kicked out on their asses.. er.. sorry... rear inputs!
That's "rear exhausts" you sexual pervert! They were never designed for input!