Bryant Walker Smith
Bryant Walker Smith is an assistant professor in the School of Law and (by courtesy) in the School of Engineering at the University of South Carolina.
Robots are already in widespread use in manufacturing and warfare. You see them increasingly in hospitals, warehouses, even homes. The mainstreaming of robotics presents a number of interesting puzzles for administrative, tort, and other areas of the law.
CIS has emerged as a national leader in exploring the intersection of law and robotics. Our staff has published on a variety of topics, including autonomous driving, the domestic use of drones, robotics and privacy, and liability for personal robots. We have held several events around artificial intelligence and robotics, including the annual Robot Block Party for National Robotics Week that draws thousands of visitors.
Bryant Walker Smith is an assistant professor in the School of Law and (by courtesy) in the School of Engineering at the University of South Carolina.
Dr. Asaro is Associate Professor in the School of Media Studies at the New School in New York City. He is the co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, and has written on lethal robotics from the perspective of just war theory and human rights. Dr. Asaro's research also examines agency and autonomy, liability and punishment, and privacy and surveillance as it applies to consumer robots, industrial automation, smart buildings, aerial drones and autonomous vehicles.
Ryan Calo is an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law and a former research director at CIS. A nationally recognized expert in law and emerging technology, Ryan's work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Wired Magazine, and other news outlets. Ryan serves on several advisory committees, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Future of Privacy Forum.
Patrick Lin is the director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group, based at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where he is also an associate philosophy professor. He has published several books and papers in the field of technology ethics, especially with respect to nanotechnology, human enhancement, robotics, cyberwarfare, space exploration, and other areas. He teaches courses in ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of technology, and philosophy of law. Dr.
By Ryan Calo on March 3, 2014 at 2:14 pm
Cyberlaw is the study of the intersection between law and the Internet. It should come as no surprise, then, that the defining questions of cyberlaw grew out of the Internet's unique characteristics. For instance: an insensitivity to distance led some courts to rethink the nature of jurisdiction. A tendency, perhaps hardwired, among individuals and institutions to think of "cyberspace" as an actual place generated a box of puzzles around the nature of property, privacy, and speech.
By Ryan Calo on March 2, 2014 at 3:03 pm
Michael Froomkin, Ian Kerr, and I, along with a wonderful program committee of law scholars and roboticists, have for three years now put on a conference around law, policy, and robotics. “We Robot” returns to the University of Miami School of Law from Stanford Law School this year and boasts an extraordinary roster of authors, commentators, and participants. Folks like Jack Balkin, Ann Bartow, Kenneth Anderson, Woodrow Hartzog, Mary Anne Franks, Margot Kaminski, Kate Darling, and David Post, among many others. Not to mention a demo from a roboticist at the University of Washington whose lab built the surgical robot for the movie Ender’s Game.
By Bryant Walker Smith on December 18, 2013 at 3:15 pm
Some ninety percent of motor vehicle crashes are caused at least in part by human error. This intuitive claim is a fine place to start discussions about the safety potential of vehicle automation. (It is not an appropriate place to end these discussions.
By Bryant Walker Smith on December 18, 2013 at 10:33 am
SAE International's On-Road Automated Vehicle Standards Committee, on which I serve along with experts from industry and government, will soon release an information report defining key concepts related to the increasing automation of on-road vehicles. Central to this 12-page report are six levels of driving automation: 0 (no automation), 1 (driver assistance), 2 (partial automation), 3 (conditional automation), 4 (high automation), and 5 (full automation).
The term “hacking” has come to signify breaking into a computer system. A number of local, national, and international laws seek to hold hackers accountable for breaking into computer systems to steal information or disrupt their operation. Other laws and standards incentivize private firms to use best practices in securing computers against attack.
Self-driving cars are here. More are on their way. Major automakers and Silicon Valley giants are clamoring to develop and release fully autonomous cars to safely and efficiently chauffeur us. Some models won’t even include a steering wheel. Along with many challenges, technical and otherwise, there is one fundamental political question that is too easily brushed aside: Who decides on how transportation algorithms will make decisions about life, death and everything in between?
This article is adapted from a forthcoming peer-reviewed essay in Volume 61 of the Communications of the ACM.
This is a guest post. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE.
"“Something goes wrong, but there’s no perpetrator,” said Ryan Calo, a professor at the University of Washington Law School who focuses on the intersection of tort law and technology, "because nobody intended this behavior.”
"“If Tesla’s going to keep asserting that, and particularly if they’re going to keep crediting NHTSA for it, then I think they need to provide the necessary analysis, caveats and qualifications behind that number,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a professor at the University of South Carolina’s School of Law, who studies driverless-car regulations.
"Beyond that, the kinds of content Zuckerberg focused on in the hearings were images and videos. From what we know about Facebook’s automated system, at its core, it’s a search mechanism across a shared database of hashes. If a video of a beheading goes up that has been previously been identified as terrorist content in the database — by Facebook or one of its partners — it’ll be automatically recognized and taken down.
"“It's not just that automated vehicles will be supercomputers,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who studies the impact of autonomous technology on society. “They'll be mobile supercomputers powered by big batteries, fed by all kinds of capable sensors both inside and outside the vehicle, and connected back to huge companies with even greater collective computing resources.”"
Part of the Cyber Insecurity series.
Probe the difficult questions that we will need to address as human-robot relationships evolve in the coming decades. Explore the nuances of our future and prepare for the complex problems that will rise as our lives become more A.I. dependent.
Adults 18+ Only.
This program is free thanks to the generosity of the Lowell Institute.
In 2013, Elon Musk proposed an "open source transportation concept" of levitating vehicles zooming passengers through vacuum tubes at 760 miles an hour. It would be weatherproof, energy-efficient, relatively inexpensive, have autonomous controls. Its impact on urban and inter-city transport could reshape economies and families.
U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, will convene a hearing on Wednesday, November 16, 2016, at 3:00 p.m. entitled “Exploring Augmented Reality.” The hearing will examine the emergence, benefits, and implications of augmented reality technologies. Unlike virtual reality that creates a wholly simulated reality, augmented reality attempts to superimpose images and visual data on the physical world in an intuitive way.
Witnesses:
• Mr. Brian Blau, Research Vice President, Gartner
Attendees will hear leading speakers, participate in interactive breakout sessions, and network with key innovators in this exciting field. Don't miss what's in store for the Automated Vehicles Symposium 2016.
Affiliate Scholars Bryant Walker Smith and Patrick Lin are confirmed speakers.
For more information, visit the conference website.
March 8, 2017
In 2013, Elon Musk proposed an "open source transportation concept" of levitating vehicles zooming passengers through vacuum tubes at 760 miles an hour. It would be weatherproof, energy-
November 30, 2016
FLI’s Ariel Conn recently spoke with Heather Roff and Peter Asaro about autonomous weapons. Roff, a research scientist at The Global Security Initiative at Arizona State University and a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, recently compiled an international database of weapons systems that exhibit some level of autonomous capabilities. Asaro is a philosopher of science, technology, and media at The New School in New York City.
November 2, 2016
Peter Asaro (assistant professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School) and S. Matthew Liao (director of the Center for Bioethics at New York University) talk to Live Science's Denise Chow and Space.com's Tariq Malik about the ethics of AI.
October 15, 2016
On October 14-15, 2016, the NYU Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness in conjunction with the NYU Center for Bioethics hosted a conference on “The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence”.