The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School is a leader in the study of the law and policy around the Internet and other emerging technologies.
CIS in the news.
"However, speaking to BBC Three, Professor Peter Asaro, vice chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, shared his concerns about battlefield AI and wonders if it could ever be used against civilians.
"The issue is that computers aren’t capable of determining when it’s legally or morally acceptable to take human life, and can’t be held morally or legally responsible for doing so.
"OpenAI's decision to keep the AI to itself makes sense to Ryan Calo, a professor at the University of Washington and co-director of the school's Tech Policy Lab, especially in light of a fake face-generating website that began circulating in mid-February.
"“These are difficult cases to prove because they need rock-solid investigations,” said Beth Van Schaack, a law professor at Stanford University who was deputy ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues in the Obama administration. Scrapping the FBI unit “is inevitably going to jeopardize prosecutions,” she said."
"“Imagine the night before an IPO, a deep fake video of the CEO comes out of the CEO soliciting a child prostitute or doing drugs,” University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law professor and privacy expert Danielle Citron, JD, said to a full house in the school’s Ceremonial Moot Courtroom.
“There goes the IPO, and the faith of the marketplace for the CEO is wrecked,” she continued."
"According to Peter Asaro, of the New School in New York, such a scenario raises issues of legal liability if the system makes an unlawful killing.
"The delegation of authority to kill to a machine is not justified and a violation of human rights because machines are not moral agents and so cannot be responsible for making decisions of life and death.
"So it may well be that the people who made the autonomous weapon are responsible.""
"“The lesson here is a need for candor,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a driverless-vehicle law expert at the University of South Carolina. “What does it mean to be trustworthy in this field?”
Companies, regulatory agencies and politicians, Smith said, need to communicate clearly: “This is what we’re doing, this is why we think it’s safe, and this is why you should believe us.”"
"None of the panelists said they were seeking to bar the use of robotics in all military applications. However, a sharp moral line should be drawn when it comes to robots or autonomous systems that can decide on their own when to use lethal force without “supervision or meaningful human control,” said Peter Asaro, an associate professor at the New School in New York and co-founder of an organization of scientists and technologists in support of robot arms control."
"“Article 13 creates more or less limitless liability with extraordinarily narrow exemptions,” says Annemarie Bridy, an academic intellectual property and technology lawyer at the University of Idaho. “The result will be that a few platforms will be positioned in terms of resources to operate with the related risk and expense. The rest will either stop hosting user-generated content, which would be a shame, or continue to do it until they get hit with an existentially threatening lawsuit, and fold.”"
"“What I really took away was there wasn’t the kind of data submitted to NHTSA that would give an agency the kind of confidence to make the statement it did,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who studies autonomous vehicle policy.
"“But that’s not the world we live in in 2019,” says Annemarie Bridy, a University of Idaho law professor specializing in copyright. “It’s a statute from a more innocent, optimistic era in the history of the Internet.”
"Ryan Calo, a cyber law expert at the University of Washington, told The Hill that Trump's executive order appears to incorporate some elements of former President Obama's AI plan.
Calo, the cyber law expert, told The Hill there needs to be an examination of "the way in which artificial intelligence can be biased, the way it can disproportionately harm vulnerable populations."
He said government needs to regulate how it procures AI technologies "so that we don’t 'unleash AI' on the world without thinking about its social impacts.""
"Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington, says it’s good to see the White House taking AI and its effects seriously. He also says it will take time to know whether the Trump administration is properly attending to the ethical and human rights questions raised by AI. “Are they aware enough of its social impacts and thinking about the effects on society and how to address the problems it creates?” Calo says. “That’s what we have to watch for.”"
"“The business model of delivering messages according to customer lists or email addresses—we have all heard of that,” said Omer Tene, chief knowledge officer at the International Association of Privacy Professionals and an affiliate scholar at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society. “But this is something I never thought about, and it definitely pushes the envelope… This is not a washer-dryer. It’s religious faith.”"
"“Law is pretty much a blunt instrument here,” said Danielle Citron, a law professor at University of Maryland who wrote the book Hate Crimes in Cyberspace. “It’s modest in what it can do because it requires law enforcement to care and it requires the victim to have the resources to pursue.” All too often, these victims aren’t even given the potential out of making a deal."
"“We worry about this in the privacy space,” says Jennifer King, director of consumer privacy at the Center for Internet and Society Stanford Law School. “Your DNA is uniquely identifiable, it’s what makes you, you. This gets into a whole new realm of privacy concerns.”"
"Huffman won't speculate on the types of regulation, but Jen King, director of privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, has an idea of what legislation could look like. She's currently researching the types of data collected through smart speakers.
She says we should all pay attention to what defaults Google and other companies set on their devices in the future, to make sure people aren't unwittingly giving up personal information.
"Kasper’s legislation was supported by Ryan Harkins, the director of state affairs and public policy at Microsoft, who said the bill would impose the country’s strongest privacy protections. He called on legislators to “modernize” privacy laws to alleviate anxieties over the increased collection of personal data by large technology firms.
"“Federal courts need to be providing this access without charge,” said Stephen W. Smith, who was until recently a federal magistrate judge in Houston and who signed a supporting brief. “There are too many downsides to creating these barriers. If you don’t give effective access to these records, it undermines courts’ legitimacy.”"
"“She was in the heart of Silicon Valley and she didn’t take no nonsense,” says Danielle Citron, the law professor. “I think her preference is, ‘It’s good for business, but let’s figure out how it’s good for society.’ I don’t think she’s cowed by anybody.”"
"A federal appeals court in Washington D.C. will hear arguments Friday in a challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's 2017 decision to end net neutrality. The challengers, a coalition of tech companies and digital rights advocates, are asking the court to reinstate Obama-era rules that barred internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon from blocking or prioritizing internet traffic. The FCC defends the rollback as encouraging innovation and easing unnecessary regulatory burdens.