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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.

10 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. Corporate Personhood ... by PPH · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... was a mistake. Don't make the same mistake again.

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    Have gnu, will travel.
  2. Dodging accountability for 2000, Alex by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:Jumping the gun just a bit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just put Alexa in a robot, or in a self driving car. Done now it's a person, and any accident it gets into is the fault of the, er, person, not Tesla. Makes a lot of sense to indemnify a corporation in this way.

  4. Re:Jumping the gun just a bit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    +1 with everything being called AI this is just a scam to avoid liability. Corporations are still controlled by people and have investors who lose when the corporation is punished. A robot should only have personhood if it has free will and is not acting purely according to some human's faulty programming, or if it has owners/investors who would lose if it is punished on an individual level yet don't fully control its actions.
    Thankfully we are a long way from that level of technology and loss of control.

  5. The question is.... by Maelwryth · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What does the robot think?

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    I reserve the write to mangle english.
  6. Re:Jumping the gun just a bit? by postbigbang · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Neither Tesla or some concept of a robot should be permitted indemnification. Instead, they should be held responsible, just as humans are. Corporations use the ostensible indemnification to behave irresponsibly. Lives are at stake, and their personal skin needs to be in the game.

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    ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  7. No worries by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This decision will be decided by the Caliphate in 2050 or so...

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    Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
  8. Limited Liability by JBMcB · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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    My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
  9. Re: Jumping the gun just a bit? by c6gunner · · Score: 2, Insightful

    However, if the company is held responsible for each and every one of those remaining accidents, are they going to sell those cars? Probably not.

    In a country with sane tort laws, yes, they will. They'll just run the statistics, roll the projected settlment payouts into the price of the car (or an annual usage fee), and carry on trying to further lower that cost. After all, that's what insurance companies do now more or less.

    In a country in which you can get $20 million from a corporation because you spilled coffee on yourself? No, you're right, they probably wouldn't.

  10. Oh for FUCK'S SAKE! by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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!