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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.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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!