Should robots be capable of bearing “personal liability”? The answer to this is at once fairly easy to answer and relatively complex to implement. Perhaps this answer will surprise you: Yes. A resounding yes.

If you’re finding that you’re writhing in varying degrees of discomfort, that’s ok. As I tell my martial arts students, “discomfort” is the first clear sensation that normative boundaries are being stretched, in some cases torn apart.

Robots are capable of bearing personal liability for the simple reason that virtually everything we know in life is a matter of judgment. Numerous authors such as Eckhart Tolle have observed that life just is. (See, for example, “The Power of Now”.) Humans apply judgment, a distorting (not necessarily in the negative sense of the term) prism composed of countless layers that catalog, force countless events/circumstances into distinct categories; i.e, a decision is made that makes a something be a something.

Consider the following illustration. If you look outside and you can see the sun, clouds, trees, etc., you automatically know it is “day”. Conversely, if you look outside and you see stars, and not much else, you know it is “night”. The existence of light outside is a fact. It can be scientifically measured. But the determination that light outside = “day” is simply a product of a decision. That is, the answer “yes, it is day” is considered the “right” answer because this is how it was decided by humans.

So how does all this translate into whether a robot should be capable of bearing personal liability? Simple. It is a matter for humans to decide. If we decide that robots are capable of bearing personal liability, they will.

Another, not necessarily sequential, question, is whether or not our existing legal framework can properly manage a scenario where a robot is being sued for a tort. Intriguing questions such as what sort of remedies would be available and would they be enforceable arise. Again, in this case too, the answer is in the positive because whether or not our legal framework can handle this depends on whether we decide it can.

Now consider the Germinating Seeds of Agency blog series in conjunction with this question. Taken together it is possible, and logical, to conclude that a robot/AiCE, can be accorded Agent status.

In my discussions around the proposed Uniform AiCE Transactions Act (UATA), I have previewed a legal framework that is designed to address these issues. It is a dense, fertile area for consideration and subsequent postings here will address my thoughts on this in more detail.

Tags: AiCE