Woodrow Hartzog, Unfair and Deceptive Robots, 74 Maryland L. Rev. 785 (2015).
When the law faces a new technology, a basic question is who governs it and with what rules? Technological development disrupts regulatory schemes. Take, for example, the challenges the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) now faces with drones. The FAA usually regulates aircraft safety. Drones force the FAA to consider—and in some cases reject as outside the agency’s mandate—issues of privacy, spectrum policy, data security, autonomous decision-making, and more. The pace and complexity of recent technological change has led some to call for the creation of new agencies, including a Federal Robotics Commission. But given the significant hurdles involved in agency creation, it is valuable in the short run to assess what tools we already have.
In Unfair and Deceptive Robots, Woodrow Hartzog takes up the question of who will govern consumer robots. Hartzog proposes that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is best equipped to govern most issues that consumer robots will soon raise. He reasons that the FTC is well prepared both as a matter of subject-matter expertise and as a matter of institutional practice.
This article was a hit at the 2015 We Robot conference. It blends practical guidance, expert knowledge of the FTC, and a range of thoughtful and often amusing examples. It also provides a window onto a number of framing questions recurring in the field: to what extent are robots new? How does that answer vary, depending on what aspect of robots you focus on? And how do you best choose or design institutions to adapt to fast-changing technology?
Read the full article at Jotwell.
- Date Published:09/29/2015
- Original Publication:Jotwell