"“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.”
Imagine this appalling scenario, Calo said: Your self-driving hybrid vehicle is equipped with machine-learning technology that allows it to “teach” itself the most efficient way to operate, a priority set by the designers. And utilizing that amazing technology, it teaches itself to always start the day with a full battery.
One day, the car’s owners forget to plug it in for the night and the car decides it would be most efficient to run its gasoline motor to charge the batteries instead. Unfortunately, the car is in a garage and the family is asphyxiated. Who’s to blame? The vehicle manufacturer? The software provider? The car itself?
“These truly emergent properties are going to be very difficult for tort law to handle,” Calo said, "because tort law relies on proximate cause and the injury must be foreseeable for the defendant to be liable.”"
- Date Published:04/19/2018
- Original Publication:Forbes