"How do you draw the line between prosecuting a robot that does harm and its creator? Who bears the burden of the crime or wrongdoing?
I recently got the chance to respond to a short story by a science fiction writer I admire. The author, Paulo Bacigalupi, imagines a detective investigating the “murder” of a man by his artificial companion. The robot insists it killed its owner intentionally in retaliation for abuse and demands a lawyer.
Today’s robots are not likely to be held legally responsible for their actions. The interesting question is whether anyone will be. If a driverless car crashes, we can treat the car like a defective product and sue the manufacturer. But where a robot causes a truly unexpected harm, the law will struggle. Criminal law looks for mens rea, meaning intent. And tort law looks for foreseeability.
If a robot behaves in a way no one intended or foresaw, we might have a victim with no perpetrator. This could happen more and more as robots gain greater sophistication and autonomy.
Do tricky problems in cyber law and robotics law keep you awake at night?
Yes: intermediary liability. Personal computers and smart phones are useful precisely because developers other than the manufacturer can write apps for them. Neither Apple nor Google developed Pokemon Go. But who should be responsible if an app steals your data or a person on Facebook defames you? Courts and lawmakers decided early on that the intermediary—the Apple or Facebook—would not be liable for what people did with the platform.
The same may not be true for robots. Personal robotics, like personal computers, is likely to rise or fall on the ingenuity of third party developers. But when bones instead of bits are on the line—when the software you download can touch you—courts are likely to strike a different balance. Assuming, as I do, that the future of robotics involves robot app stores, I am quite concerned that the people that make robots will not open them up to innovation due to the uncertainty of whether they will be held responsible if someone gets hurt."