I'm very happy to announce National Robotics Week, an effort by leading robotics companies, research universities, museums, and others to raise awareness of U.S. robotics. In this inaugural year, NRW will take place all over the country April 10 through 18, including three great events in the Bay Area.
The website is nationalroboticsweek.org. You can follow NRW on Twitter (#roboweek) and Facebook.
PS: The NRW logo is available under a Creative Commons license.
Jonathan Zittrain and Elizabeth Stark invite you to follow along with "Difficult Problems in Cyberlaw," an innovative course at Stanford involving students from three leading schools. Details for the course---including a wiki and Twitter---below. I'm appearing as a guest on January 12.
"In the coming three weeks, students from Harvard, MIT, and Stanford will be tackling real-life problems of Internet commerce, governance, security, and information dissemination at Stanford Law School. This course, Difficult Problems in Cyberlaw, covers the Global Network Initiative, ubiquitous human computing, the future of Wikipedia, and cybersecurity, and is co-taught by Jonathan Zittrain and Elizabeth Stark."
You can now find both the audio and the video of our panel on robotics and the law on the Stanford Law School website. See also my recent blog post.
Here are some links to just a few of the people thinking about robotics and either law or ethics:
I’m in the middle of writing a paper on liability for harm caused by (or with) personal robots. The paper grows out of a panel that Dan Siciliano and I organized around the present, near future, and far future of robotics and the law. I’ve recently received some media coverage that, while welcome and accurate, presents a danger of oversimplifying my position. Specifically, a few people have understood my remarks to suggest that manufacturers should enjoy total immunity for the personal robots they build and sell, merely because doing otherwise would chill innovation.
This post develops my position in a little more detail. On my view, robotics manufacturers should be immune from certain theories of civil liability—particularly those premised on the range of a robot’s functionality. I don’t believe that the law should bar accountability for roboticists in all instances. Nor am I by any means certain that my suggestion represents the exact right way to handle liability. But I am convinced that we should talk about the issue. The alternative is to risk missing out on a massive global advance in technology capable of substantially better our world.
The ACLU of Northern California has officially launched dotRights, a comprehensive set of materials and tools to learn about, and act upon, privacy and free speech on the Internet. Complete with an interactive village covering topics from cloud computing to e-book privacy, this website and campaign represent a game-changing resource for anyone (company, activist, regulator, or consumer) who cares about privacy and free speech on the Internet. Congratulations and great work!
PS: You can follow the campaign on Facebook and Twitter.
I'm moderating an upcoming panel on law and robotics, co-sponsored by the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance and the Stanford Program in Law Science and Technology's Center for Computers and Law (CodeX). Details below. Register here.
November 12, 2009 from 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Stanford Law School, Room 190
5:30 p.m.- 6:30 p.m. Reception
6:30 p.m. - 7:45 p.m. Panel
Once relegated to factories and fiction, robots are rapidly entering the mainstream. Advances in artificial intelligence translate into ever-broadening functionality and autonomy. Recent years have seen an explosion in the use of robotics in warfare, medicine, and exploration. Industry analysts and UN statistics predict equally significant growth in the market for personal or service robotics over the next few years. What unique legal challenges will the widespread availability of sophisticated robots pose? Three panelists with deep and varied expertise discuss the present, near future, and far future of robotics and the law.
An Australian court rules that a mortgage company can issue notice of a lien over Facebook. A court in the UK permits an injunction to be served via Twitter. A woman is arrested in Tennessee for “poking” someone over Facebook in violation of a protective order. Meanwhile, a 1978 provision of the Bankruptcy Code still provides that notice shall “be published at least once a week for three successive weeks in at least one newspaper of general circulation.” New forms (and norms) of communication are both expanding and contracting the avenues for legally meaningful notice. Just how do we know, in this uncharted new landscape, when notice is enough?
I've blogged before about the impact of anthropomorphic interfaces and devices. I've recently written an article on the subject. In it I point out that we're using voice-driven and other human-like interfaces more and more. They grab our attention and free up our hands for others tasks. And they can help us accept machines---such as personal or service robots---for a whole new set of tasks.
Psychologists and communications scholars will tell you, however, that our brains are hardwired to treat these "fake" people as though they were real, including with respect to the feeling of being observed and evaluated. That means that we react to such technology, behaviorally and physiologically, as though a person were really present.
This could be bad for privacy. Privacy scholars will tell you that its not good for us to always feel like we're surrounded by others. We need "moments offstage," to use Alan Westin's famous formulation. It could also be good for privacy, particularly on the Internet. Using avatars instead of privacy policies that no one reads or understands could help shore up the failing regime of online notice.
You can view the article here. As of today, it's looking for a good home.
The very clever folks at the ACLU of Northern California have put out a Facebook quiz that helps users understand what quiz app developers can find out about them. Hint: it's a lot. This work builds on a June report on the same topic. Congrats!
