Research project

Investigator:

Paul Opitz

Abstract:

The advancement of technology continues to play a growing role in our daily lives. More and more machines, from medical robots and autonomous cars to industrial machines and consumer devices, are highly automatized or even fully autonomous. But since even the best, newest technology is not totally error-free, domestic robots, self-driving cars, and other autonomous systems will inevitably cause harm to other people or their property. In order for society to accept the new technologies and to foster innovation, clear rules on civil liability are required.

In the past, the advancing technology has led to various special statutes in individual member states of the European Union, in which a kind of strict liability has been introduced, replacing the ordinary requirement of negligence. Will that trend extend to fully autonomous robots? Who will be civilly liable if domestic robots or other autonomous systems cause injuries?

This project addresses the issue of civil liability and possible approaches that new statutes or other solutions could use to determine liability rules in the EU and US. Recently, the European Parliament (2015/2103(INL)) argued that the existing laws might not be capable of handling every aspect of autonomous systems, since those systems cease to be mere tools in the hands of their users. The higher the level of autonomy, the more independent decisions robots might make, diminishing the human sphere of influence. The parliament emphasized the importance of new regulations on a European level in order to ensure an equal and transparent legal environment across Europe. The challenges posed by autonomous machines for the legal systems and possible solutions to this problem have also been widely discussed by scholars in the United States. This paper aims to analyze, compare, and critically discuss the approaches of the European Parliament and those of legal scholars in the US in order to contribute further arguments to the ongoing discussion.