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.

Comments

Jumping the gun just a bit?

[magarity]

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.

Re:Jumping the gun just a bit?

[michelcolman]

I would like to point out a flaw in this logic.

Suppose a company can make a self driving car that demonstrably has 50% less accidents than human drivers. (I am not making any claims about existing technology from any particular company, just take this as an axiom that could be true at some point, now or in the future)

I hope we can all agree that it would be a good thing if we can reduce the number of accidents by half, right?

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. This means we will keep having twice as many accidents as we could have.

Of course there must be some kind of incentive to force manufacturers to deliver good products, and aome kind of punishment for those who make crappy products. But sometimes you just have to be able to say "OK, accidents happen, nothing is perfect", If every death results in a multi million dollar claim, innovation stops and we'll be stuck with the current "you can use it but keep your hands on the wheel and be attentive at all times, you are still responsible" situation. Which is ridiculous and untenable in the long term.

We're just talking about insurance here. If AI failures are treated as generic accidents covered by insurance, and the number of accidents decreases, the insurance premiums will decrease as well and it's a win-win for everyone. Better performing AI will have a lower insurance premium and will therefore sell more cars. Also, official statistics will be kept about the safety records of different systems, and that will be a big part of the sales pitch. There's your incentive.

There's a reason why most software comes with "no warranty, implied or otherwise, including fitness for any particular purpose". Pretty much all software companies would go bankrupt if they were held responsible for every crash, every data corruption, etcetera. Sometimes you just have to accept "ok, they did their best, mistakes happen, the world is better off with this product than without it".

No

[Kjella]

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.

Just adapt laws for Pets

[Roger W Moore]

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.

Two wrongs don't make a right

[Opportunist]

Just because you fucked up and let corporations be "persons" doesn't mean repeating this mistake is a good idea.