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Europe Divided Over Robot 'Personhood' (politico.eu)
Politico Europe has an interesting piece which looks at the high-stakes debate between European lawmakers, legal experts and manufacturers over who should bear the ultimate responsibility for the actions by a machine: the machine itself or the humans who made them?. Two excerpts from the piece: The battle goes back to a paragraph of text, buried deep in a European Parliament report from early 2017, which suggests that self-learning robots could be granted "electronic personalities." Such a status could allow robots to be insured individually and be held liable for damages if they go rogue and start hurting people or damaging property.
Those pushing for such a legal change, including some manufacturers and their affiliates, say the proposal is common sense. Legal personhood would not make robots virtual people who can get married and benefit from human rights, they say; it would merely put them on par with corporations, which already have status as "legal persons," and are treated as such by courts around the world.
Those pushing for such a legal change, including some manufacturers and their affiliates, say the proposal is common sense. Legal personhood would not make robots virtual people who can get married and benefit from human rights, they say; it would merely put them on par with corporations, which already have status as "legal persons," and are treated as such by courts around the world.
We are a loooooong way from a mobile/portable AI computing system that can fit in a robot. And there's very little to think that may be the case in the foreseeable future. Robots with enough AI to need personhood will probably be controlled from a remote data center which in turn will probably control a bunch of them. (Yes, I know I just described Skynet) Anyway, sci-fi aside, just look at what the Air Force does with drones. Replace humans in the control center with AI and there you have it.
No machines for at least another two major breakthroughs are going to be self-learning enough to qualify for robotic personhood and even then I imagine they will still be following their programming without much in the way of personality. Until such time as robots can make judgement calls that leverage behavior outside of their programming and training data they should remain treated as products of the person or corporation that manufactured them with all the warranty and liability requirements that entails. Come back to me in about 20-30 years, or after someone has spent the equivalent of 10 billion dollars on a single computer system running a single autonomous device and we might be in a better position to discuss this, because anything less than either of those will not provide a system or AI sophisticated enough to warrant this particular legal attention.
Their asses are covered and they are excused from all responsibility for the activities of their companies. As robots aren't sentient and never will be, it's tantamount to holding a jackhammer responsible for a manufacturing defect. Sounds like a corporate wet dream, and it's complete bullshit.
So the whole debate boils down to a few words within one paragraph inside a document?
I can't think of a worse example of BUREAUCRACY RUNS WILD !!
How can EU function well when it is laden with this kind of mindless bureaucracies ?
Have gnu, will travel.
because that is the definition of a person. In Europe.
This is yet another push by businesses to avoid accountability for complex systems they create.
Until General Artificial Intelligence (the scary kind) is a thing, liability for the performance of an automated system should be on
A) the manufacturer (for provable negligence in testing and implementation)
B)The operating agency (for cases of knowingly misusing a system in such a way that it causes harm even if operating within tested-by-manufacturer parameters)
C) "the victim" - in the exceedingly rare case that a using company is doing everything right and Joe Blow decides to try machine tipping while the device is in operation despite all safety warnings and obstacles put in his way. Npte, this clause would not apply if a using company ordered someone into that situation. The threshold of proof for being 'ordered to' should be absurdly low. I.e. even mentioning that someone doing something incredibly dangerous reverts liability to operator.
is smashing one to bits murder?
A company as a "legal person" makes a degree of sense as the company performs actions, is liable for those actions and posses assets to be used as compensation.
Making a machine liable for it's own actions only works if the machine posses assets to make good any adverse finding. However much it amuses me to imagine it I can't see a company transferring ownership of a factory and its land to the machines that work in it. Transferring liability to a machine without also transferring assets is simply a mechanism to dodge responsibility.
Where if the people running the corporation do really bad things, they are held responsible, not the company.
For the corporations ... to limit their liability for "going rogue" that can be, security breach, malfunction and the like.
... it seems inevitable they will be granted person-hood, and consumers will have to take out robot insurance.
It makes perfect sense for manufactures to want to make sure they are not liable for any damages. Doesn't make sense for the consumer who will be stuck with the bill, as inevitably it will then be the responsibility of the current owner for any damages of a robot going the very fuzzy definition of going rouge.
Of course the other people that benefit greatly from this are lawyers since they will get paid the big bucks to decide if what the robot did was in fact going rouge.
in short:
Winners:
Lawyers, manufactures, software companies Losers:
Consumers
Such a status could allow robots to be insured individually and be held liable for damages if they go rogue and start hurting people or damaging property.
Uh, shouldn't this be exactly like car insurance? If you own a dangerous piece of machinery you can be held liable so you insure against that, it doesn't need personhood for that. Companies are different because we've intentionally insulated the stock owners from being personally liable for everything the company does. A robot doesn't have any assets, a broken robot is worth almost nothing so this sounds like some sort of scam to let the victim get stuck with nothing.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What does the robot think?
I reserve the write to mangle english.
What's the difference between a robot and a machine, exactly? We've had machines in factories for 150 years, and there were other kind of machines far earlier still - like steam engine to pump water from coal mines, a century before trains. Or clock towers centuries before. Windmills in the Nederlands.
Do you want to operate a machine unsupervised, but you wish it not kills or maims people? Deal with it.
My town has had a driver-less subway for decades ; well there's elevators/lifts that similarly operate without a lift engineer in the cabin. They don't need corporate personhood. Sure, the movement is severely restrained. There are deadly accidents occasionally though (not on the subway yet).
Surely, I should know better or think it better through but : what if things were that simple after all? A machine is a machine.
I would not have written this at all 15 or 10 years ago. But I wonder if tech is overrated these days. The USSR had an autonomous drone fly... on another planet!
Nowadays, you can't even buy a doom-like and play it single player without an access to the internet. Or even run Windows or Linux on a phone. Yawn, wake me up when computers do something fun or interesting again.
As I pointed out above... high-end Roomba's from iRobot already have fairly sophisticated self-learning (the cheap ones are just random - but the high-end ones "learn" as they go). They can also do some damage if they make a mistake (example I gave above is knocking over a candle and burning down a house).
Where do draw the line? How much "personality" does a robot need to have?
How much have the self-driving car manufacturers paid out in liability to date?
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
They are trying to create a path that enable them to tax robots. This is dangerous. The consumer ends up paying all taxes in th end. But think of the consequences of taxing every robot in a factory. They could have thirty robots tackling phases of creation of a product. In effect that would hold back automation and we would have an economic horror show as other nations may not tax robots at all. Say goodbye to American exported products.
This decision will be decided by the Caliphate in 2050 or so...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
So now there's a Roomba which will not injure your cat, nor through inaction allow your cat to come to harm?
Fucking idiots.
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
Take a look at the idiot in the cubicle next to you, that has the resistor color code in their hair already.
So are you for limited liability?
I have a family member who owns a small store. The only reason they haven't been sued into oblivion three or four times is because the store itself isn't worth much, and limited liability prevents people from suing my family member directly to take their personal possessions away.
Keep in mind every single one of these lawsuits was beyond garbage. Some lady drove her car into the side of the store then tried to sue the store for... I honestly have no idea. Failing to make the store car-proof? Her lawyer wanted to know how much money the store made every year, my family member told him, and never heard from the lawyer again.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I wouldn't worry too much about that - the cat is more likely to injure the Roomba. I've wondered when Roomba is likely to arm their robots against cats.
Anyone too pig ignorant to know the difference between "robot" and "sentient AI" is completely incapable of adding to an ethical discussion on the topic. If we ever create sentient AIs, idiots like this would give a factory arm with eyes painted on it visitation rights but let people enslave and torture actual AIs for fun.
No liability for the machines they build and the software they run on them. So what should happen to a robot that kills a person? Jail time? Execution? How do you even distinguish between killing someone by accident vs. deliberately, by programmatic choice, if the program is no longer a sequence of commands and decisions but a shitload of numbers that defines a neural network?
The analogy to corporate personhood is a fallacy. Corporations are associations of people, and people in them are still liable for what they do. Projecting personhood onto a tool would also mean that we can no longer use it as a tool because that would be slavery. But no matter what we call them, robots are not autonomous at all, nor should they be. The whole concept is absurd.
just like corporations are the way for the rich to avoid liability, it's just more corruption and greed and the evasion of personal responsibility
This is all such bull shit obscured in the construct of 'law'.. Like shielding PEOPLE who incorporate from liability of what they do.. It was highly debated when the legal framework of 'corporation' was defined, and those against it, like so many other traditional ideals were correct, despite what the crooks in charge say... ..
Want companies to be ethical? Make those who work and run and OWN! them libel... Don't use government in protectionism of business in any form, use real money, and so on and so on..
Viva la revolution!
Some argue that corporations are people https://www.youtube.com/watch?... . Yeah. thats crazy. they may be members of society, but they are not something we need to cater to. Same goes for Robots. can we define a class for each in society?
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
How dare you deny my Toaster its rights!
We are a loooooong way from a mobile/portable AI computing system that can fit in a robot.
True, but we already have a legal framework for a very similar situation that should be easy to adapt: pets. These are semi-intelligent things which certainly do not have any sort of personhood under law, are not allowed to marry, own property etc.
The first robots are not likely to be as smart as a dog so why not just adapt the laws we have for them? The owner has certain responsibilities but, unless they directly encouraged criminal behaviour, is not usually criminally liable for the dog e.g. if the dog bites someone the owner may have to pay damages but cannot be prosecuted for assault unless they commanded the dog to attack or they knew the dog was likely to attack and did nothing to stop it.
Since robots are made you would need to establish some safety requirements like easily accessible emergy off-buttons, voice commands, remote controls etc. This should be good enough to cope with most robots for the foreseeable future since, as you note, it is going to be a long time before we have to worry about robots marrying or even expressing genuine emotions.
It's a vital question. If a robot or device cannot make a contract, how can they be considered a person? Conversely, if they cannot make a contract, how can they have any resources to file suit for and how can a plaintiff injured or damaged by the robot receive any damages.
Makes perfect sense.
Why should I take responsibility when the killer robots my company is producing for the military go rogue and kill the wrong people?
Blame the real culprits - the robots! People don't kill people, robots do.
There are 2 groups for this: people who realize it's fake, it's manufactured, and giving AI rights would be disastrous and idiotic. The other group is people who are too stupid to recognize a facade, a fake, a convincing set of falsehoods that trigger emotional responses in their brain. Can we please stop catering to stupid people constantly in every sector of society?
Seriously? People are responsible for the actions of robots. People that program them, companies etc... End of story.
Interesting, but contrived dilemma.
Will the robot be the one getting paid for its services and retaining assets that can be sued? If so, we can consider debating this.
But if the company is getting paid for the robot's services and trying to push the legal responsibility onto the asset-less robot, than this is a complete farce.
Also, one would hope that the programming will contain a series of unalterable moral checks to prevent the robot from "learning" that it's OK to hurt people or property.
We're utterly miles from even conceiving of this and it sounds to me like a potentially, totally dangerous precedent.
They are MACHINES, don't take this the wrong way but we can finally "have slaves" without feeling guilty. These are tools for us to use, that we create, without us being horrible people.
I can't possibly envision us getting to "is the machine a person" in any capacity until we're at some kind of Commander data level of machines. Does anyone see humanity achieving that even in the next 30 years? If not 100 years.
It didn't know whether the cat was alive or dead because it couldn't open the box.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The person who bought them, if they operated the robot per the manufacturer's manual.
Otherwise, the blame goes to the manufacturer.
Europe can go shit in its own mouth and munch on a mouthful of feces. But I bet it would like it. Europeans = shitlovers.
Just because you fucked up and let corporations be "persons" doesn't mean repeating this mistake is a good idea.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We have a hard enough time trying to determine when personhood starts in human development.
To take "people" like this who are suggesting that corporations and robots are people out back and put a fucking bullet in their brain-pan. These fuckers should be killed immediately. Arm yourself. Kill these fuckers on sight. Raid the halls of parliament and your legislature. Drag them out by their genitals and put a fucking bullet in them immediately. It's the only way to be sure!
Legal personhood would not make robots virtual people who can get married and benefit from human rights
So it's slavery then? UNACCEPTABLE.
Either they are Not independent enough for their creator/controller to lose full responsibility for what they do OR they ARE independent enough that they have a right to choose what they do and not be exploited, induced, or biased in what they do by whoever made them.
Responsibility should go hand-in-hand with control/choice.
If the robot chose to act in the manner it did, fine, blame the robot. Until then, blame <generic-low-level-developer-scapegoat-ala-vw-emissions-gate> or applying the same principle again, blame the person who had control over the direction of the development of the robot.
Requiem for the American Dream
Western Europe is delusional.
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Initially the maker is allways responsible because he/she is the one programming the capabilities.
If a machine is selflearning it can held responsible when it reaches it's "adult" age.
Just like it is with humans, no real difference here. Nothing can make itself, but (if) it can learn it will be selfresponisble after certain time.
Does that mean that they're liable for lithium ion farts?
Well, if you couldn't open the box, you can be fairly certain it's dead. Cats need water to stay alive after all.
Yeah, just wait till the AIs get together and vote on whether humans count as sentient.
Is your toaster a person too? How about your fridge? Want to spend your life and resources in court suing your appliances? And they can't get married--TODAY. But what about tomorrow, since this is just a bridge law or regulation? I'm not kidding. If there is advantage to your machines being persons, and there is advantage to them being married, expect eventually that it will be allowed for machines to be married. And corrupt and incompetent legislatures will allow it too. And if it is a person that you can sue, it is a person that can sue YOU. Want to be sued by everything in your daily life? Want to go through your life fearful of the financial consequences to you of crossing some MACHINE?! This is really just another attempt to allow machines to kill you and for manufacturers of these artifacts to deny all responsibility for your death. What if you had to sue your car and not FORD during the ignition switch debacle recently? Would there have been any incentive to fix the problem on the part of ford? Of course not. Sue HIM/HER (but not IT, the machine)! And this doesn't even address the busy-courts problem. Do we really want the court calendar clogged up with machine suits? We already have to be careful around people to an extraordinary degree. Do we have to tiptoe around our machines too?
E Proelio Veritas.
We DO NOT HAVE real AI, all we have is PSEUDO-INTELLIGENCE, there is no 'person' inside that box, goddamnit! There is no 'consciousness', 'self-awareness', 'sentience', or any other trait/phenomenon we attribute to human beings inside these machines, they are just SOFTWARE. They are not people by any stretch of the imagination, stop anthropomorphizing them, this is not TV or the movies, that is all just FICTION, stop belieiving it's real!
Machines are machines and if they malfunction and hurt/kill someone, the MANUFACTURER is ultimately responsible, the MACHINE cannot by definition be 'held responsible' because it is just a MACHINE!
For fuck's sake stop this nonsense already!
And you are still a loser
Roomba's do not learn like people do. Its all just some complicated Math. even advanced neural nets are just math. We have not yet invented anything that could be considered conscious using even the most liberal definition. The line should be drawn at consciousness.
..Is something they ALL can agree upon!
There are ethical questions to debate long before legislating . A small example. If I back up the memory, in whatever form, and destroy the hardware utterly and completely, have I the entity. If I then restore it to a different hardware setup, is that unmurdering? A new entity? If I restore it to more than one hardware setup am I legally a parent? Is the first creator the parent of all derived entities? If I merge the software from two entities is that their child? Settle the science, settle or at least understand the ethics, then debate what the laws should be, then and only then consider laws regarding them. And shouldnâ(TM)t there be some basic set of tests to determine the status. Is my toaster eligible? Or my work computer. Am I obligated to to a hardware setup that currently runs simple, in comparison, software, and install software so it becomes aware. Will AI developers have to be licensed like doctors? If a developer creates a self aware software suite, are they responsible for any evil intent that develops? Establish the basic boundaries. And then consider cetaceans and suidae... the tests may wish to exclude them ...
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Don't forget that with personhood also come rights, such as voting, standing for election, having an opinion, proposing policy, ability enter into contracts and to own property, right to not be owned by another person (i.e. no robot slavery).
You don't just give the robot responsibility while the rest of the list stays with the manufacturer or the owner gets to keep the rest.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
This place is slipping.
Give the robots a pussy and make them lesbian, and you will get a field day with female LGBT robots, yeah to the a triple minority.
The net never forgets :)
[($)]
Central Scrutinizer: This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER... Joe and his date are going back to the apartment to have a little party... Joe: Sy Borg Gimme dat, gimme dat Sy Borg Gimme dat, give me de chromium leg, I beg Sy Borg Gimme dat, gimme dat
....Zuck is in trouble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
It's not just math when the inputs are from the real world. You could say that humans learning is only chemistry / quantum mechanics - that doesn't make it less true that we learn.
Each Roomba (the more expensive ones anyway) use sensor data to grow an "idea" of how your house is laid out and use that to clean more efficiently. What that is that they do will be individual to each Roomba.
I call that learning: taking sensor data over time and forming a series of actions based on it.
Machines have no ethics. Machines have no morality. Therefore they can not make decisions
Even AI's do not have these. Like an Eliza program, they can fool you into thinking they do but in a double blind test, they will be no more able of being ethical or moral and/or reaching a consistent ethical or moral decision than you'd get flipping a coin. Thus they have NONE.
Attributing ethics or morals to a inanimate objects like a robot or computer is a COP OUT. It's laziness on the part of responsible humans who should be doing the thinking instead and taking responsibility for their creations, purchases or tools.
Abdicating this responsibility does NOT rubber stamp the ethics or morality of what a machine does nor does it absolve the creator, purchaser or user of that machine from the unethical or immoral results resulting from that machine. The HUMANS responsible for enabling the machine are the people responsible ethically and morally for ALL actions of the machine.
If there is any doubt about how a machine might be used, then it clearly must not be used for any purpose that results in a questionable result and that the same responsible humans do not want to be held for.
A simple equivalent example is a nuclear weapon: they have no intrinsic morality in what they do - it is the human that uses them that defines and is responsible for their immorality! It's always about humans because only humans can reason out ethics and morality!!
This is such a fundamental and obvious thing that it's a horror and failing that the question could even come up!!
Can we blame a car if someone crashes while driving carelessly?