Future Robots May be Considered “Electronic Persons”

...if a machine can think, decide and act on its own volition, if it can be harmed or held responsible for its actions, should we stop treating it like property and start treating it more like a person with rights?

What if a robot achieves true self-awareness? Should it have equal rights with us and the same protection under the law, or at least something similar?

These are some of the issues being discussed by the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs. ...

...Of the legal solutions proposed, perhaps most interesting was the suggestion of creating a legal status of “electronic persons” for the most sophisticated robots.

Future Robots May be Considered “Electronic Persons”

The report also questions about whether or not sufficiently sophisticated robots should be regarded as natural persons, legal persons (like corporations), animals or objects. Rather than lumping them into an existing category, it proposes that a new category of “electronic person” is more appropriate.

This is one of the interesting discussions going on in the world besides immigration, building super-long walls, insults and trade deficits. Robot rights is kinda right up there with the death of the middle-class.

The EU will vote on the resolution this month.

The European Parliament will vote on the resolution this month. Regardless of the result, reconsidering robots and the law is inevitable and will require complex legal, computer science, and insurance research.

Some of the resolution's issues include the following.

...the current EU directive on liability for harm by robots only covers foreseeable damage caused by manufacturing defects. In these cases, the manufacturer is responsible. However, when robots are able to learn and adapt to their environment in unpredictable ways, it’s harder for a manufacturer to foresee problems that could cause harm.

Okay, fine. It's not a totally urgent matter. But what about that lawsuit?

...computers still have a long way to go before they match human intelligence if they ever do.

But it can be agreed that robots – or more precisely the software that controls them – is becoming increasingly complex. Autonomous (or “emergent”) machines are becoming more common. There are ongoing discussions about the legal liability for autonomous vehicles, or whether we might be able to sue robotic surgeons.

These are not complicated problems as long as liability rests with the manufacturers. But what if manufacturers cannot be easily identified, such as if open source software is used by autonomous vehicles? Whom do you sue when there are millions of “creators” all over the world?

Other countries are already on it, like China, Japan and South Korea.

Peking University’s Yueh-Hsuan Weng writes that Japan and South Korea expect us to live in a human-robot coexistence by 2030. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry has created a series of robot guidelines addressing business and safety issues for next generation robots.

Other concerns:

If we did give robots some kind of legal status, what would it be? If they behaved like humans, we could treat them like legal subjects rather than legal objects, or at least something in between. Legal subjects have rights and duties, and this gives them legal “personhood”. They do not have to be physical persons; a corporation is not a physical person but is recognized as a legal subject. Legal objects, on the other hand, do not have rights or duties although they may have economic value.

Assigning rights and duties to an inanimate object or software program independent of their creators may seem strange. However, with corporations, we already see extensive rights and obligations given to fictitious legal entities.

Perhaps the approach to robots could be similar to that of corporations? ...

Hmm. I don't happen to think corporations should be legal persons.

But I do think maybe North America should get busy. We're definitely lagging behind Europe and Asia on this one.

..if a machine can think, decide and act on its own volition, if it can be harmed or held responsible for its actions, should we stop treating it like property and start treating it more like a person with rights?

This people is the future.

This is going to happen, and the politics that come with it.

living wages,the right to vote,vacation time the whole shabang.

An entire demographic created over nite.

a reply to: neo96

And the social justice warriors and snowflakes will be crying out "Robots are people too!!!"

a reply to: soficrow

I'm for it if they pay taxes

originally posted by: FamCore
a reply to: neo96

And the social justice warriors and snowflakes will be crying out "Robots are people too!!!"

Don't forget they will need their own rest rooms too, and financial safety nets.


LOL.

The future is going to be absurd.

Humans just love their anthropomorphism, and will be ashamed of their human privilege.

The European Parliament clearly has nothing better to do with its time.

a reply to: soficrow

Look the new Democrat voting base! They dont even have to get them to immigrate.

They will all be voting Democrat I bet.

I would rather give rights to whales and dolphins.

originally posted by: FamCore
a reply to: neo96

And the social justice warriors and snowflakes will be crying out "Robots are people too!!!"

Better to give robots the same rights as humans before we start uploading our mind/soul/essence into them. Not a fight you want to battle after the fact.

a reply to: neo96

If we jump right over robot slaves and straight to sentient AI that are imbued with basic human(sentient) rights... What makes you think that the first question the robots wont ask themselves is "Why are we doing this, what are we getting out of this?".

Which is an entirely valid question.

Not only will we have all the political and legal requirements for the new sentient life we've created, we'll also need a reward system in place for these AI similar to our wages.
Considering a robot would require some maintenance if it can't perform the functions themselves, would be akin to Health Insurance.
But outside of electricity, robots wouldn't require any biological requirement in the terms of food/drink unless they in part of biological components.

So the step would come to what would these robots do in their day to day life?
What burden would they place on the current financial system if they aren't able to get work?
What standard social care system would we need in place to provide a support system for these AI?
Would high risk jobs have a fill requirement of being a robot?
Would these same high risk jobs have a similar pay rate to that of what it would cost for a human to perform this job?
What limits do we try and enforce on these sentient AI? -- Do we have any right to enforce any restrictions?

Outside of ALL these different aspects of the new AI life we will need to consider... The BIGGEST one for me is this;
How do we handle procreation?
Do we leave procreation entirely in the hands on the sentient AI?
Do we ban the creation of sentient AI by humans?
Do we allow the creation of sentient AI by humans as it may be seen as a basic sentient right, that we humans can create sentient AI life as we would human offspring?

A very vast topic that I love to think about as it would impact the entire human culture and way of life.
What is good for the goose is good for the gander...

Cognitum ergo Sum

Yes.

They should have equal rights.

Ugh!

Now synths are 'identifying' as human?

a reply to: soficrow

These are some of the issues being discussed by the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs

Like they've got nothing better to do , this is an example of typical EU nonsense.

Do androids dream of electric sheep ?

a reply to: Sovaka

The only life humans can create comes from procreation.

Robots/AI is nothing more than silicon chips and program.

Still anthropomorphism.

No matter how much humans want a 'toaster' to be human.

It won't be.

a reply to: gortex

Do androids dream of electric sheep?

Depends upon what they had for dinner, or watched on TV before going to bed.

And always good to consider:

How to Keep Your AI From Turning Into a Racist Monster

...If you’re not sure whether algorithmic bias could derail your plan, you should be.

Algorithmic bias—when seemingly innocuous programming takes on the prejudices either of its creators or the data it is fed—causes everything from warped Google searches to barring qualified women from medical school. It doesn’t take active prejudice to produce skewed results (more on that later) in web searches, data-driven home loan decisions, or photo-recognition software. It just takes distorted data that no one notices and corrects for.

...“We are running the risk of seeding self-teaching AI with the discriminatory undertones of our society in ways that will be hard to rein in, because of the often self-reinforcing nature of machine learning.”

...Rather than clinging to the belief that technology is impartial, engineers and developers should take steps to ensure they don’t accidentally create something that is just as racist, sexist, and xenophobic as humanity has shown itself to be.

a reply to: Ohanka

The European Parliament clearly has nothing better to do with its time.

Not just the EU - other nations like China, South Korea and Japan are actively working on the problem.

originally posted by: soficrow
And always good to consider:

How to Keep Your AI From Turning Into a Racist Monster

...If you’re not sure whether algorithmic bias could derail your plan, you should be.

Algorithmic bias—when seemingly innocuous programming takes on the prejudices either of its creators or the data it is fed—causes everything from warped Google searches to barring qualified women from medical school. It doesn’t take active prejudice to produce skewed results (more on that later) in web searches, data-driven home loan decisions, or photo-recognition software. It just takes distorted data that no one notices and corrects for.

...“We are running the risk of seeding self-teaching AI with the discriminatory undertones of our society in ways that will be hard to rein in, because of the often self-reinforcing nature of machine learning.”

...Rather than clinging to the belief that technology is impartial, engineers and developers should take steps to ensure they don’t accidentally create something that is just as racist, sexist, and xenophobic as humanity has shown itself to be.

So PROGRAMS are RACIST!

LOL good grief.

a reply to: neo96

Read neo, READ!

The article is about algorithmic bias.

[Good grief.]

a reply to: neo96

Read neo, READ!

The article is about algorithmic bias.

[Good grief.]