WEBVTT - From the Vault: Punish the Machine, Part 1 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.680 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:07.720 --> 0:00:10.639 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:13.640 Time for an episode from the Vault. This is the 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:16.959 beginning of a series that we did about about robot 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:21.200 culpability and machine punishment. I think we're just calling this 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:24.000 Punish the Machine Part one, right, So this originally aired 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:29.040 on April. This one raised a lot of interesting questions 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:34.960 and so we hope you enjoy it. Welcome to stot 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:44.280 to Blow Your Mind, production of My Heart Radio. Hey you, 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:46.240 welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:49.559 Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And right before we 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:52.559 started recording today, we were just talking about that iconic 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:56.800 scene and returned to the Jedi where the droids are 0:00:56.800 --> 0:00:59.480 sent to the droid torture Chamber. Do you remember there? 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:01.640 I guess it's not just a droid torture chamber. It's 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:05.920 sort of like the uh, the Droid onboarding center right 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:08.200 where the you know, R two, D two and C 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:10.600 three po have been given as gifts to job of 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:13.080 the Hut and they go meet their new like droid 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:15.959 boss and he's like you you're a feisty little one 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:18.760 and he's signing them in but uh, he sees that 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:21.280 R two D two is a is a bad robot 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:24.720 who needs discipline, and R two D two is confronted 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:29.080 with these images of robots being punished with various corporal punishments, 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:32.280 like one is getting stretched on a robot rack and 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:36.160 another one is getting its feet burned. Yes, this is 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:40.040 a This is a great scene, one that that definitely 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:42.320 burns its way into your your brain as a as 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:44.200 a young viewer, and maybe you don't think about it 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:46.640 that much for a long time, but uh, it's it's 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:49.360 still in there. It's it takes place in the bowels 0:01:49.400 --> 0:01:53.720 of job as Palace on tattooing and it's um, yeah, 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:58.240 it's like Droid intake but also Droid corrections. It's there. 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:00.440 There are a number of different department that I think 0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:04.640 are converging here and and it ray it ultimately kind 0:02:04.640 --> 0:02:09.120 of raises some interesting questions about um about ethics and 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:12.880 punishment and in crime, and certainly as it relates to 0:02:13.200 --> 0:02:16.800 two robots. Uh. Of course, one thing, this important distress 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:18.840 here is like none of this was really intended in 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:23.560 these scenes. This was about having droids doing things that 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:27.079 humans would be doing to each other in other pieces 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:30.919 of cinema, certainly, things like old pirate movies or old 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:33.120 sin bad movies or what have you. I mean, that's 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:36.399 kind of that's kind of Star Wars in a nutshell, right. Uh. 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:39.720 This whole portion of Return of the Jedi is essentially 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:43.160 a big pirate movie, a big swashbuckler set in an 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:45.640 alien location. Oh yeah, the job of the hud as 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:50.120 a pirate captain. Yeah. But something interesting occurs when you 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:55.840 replace the humans in these these tropic scenes with machines. Uh, 0:02:55.880 --> 0:02:57.720 and then you think about it, you know, you think 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:00.720 about why is that robot torturing the other as if 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:03.880 it makes perfect sense if it's humans doing it, But 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:06.799 then the things that we create in our image when 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:09.280 they're doing it, suddenly we start seeing the flaws in 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:12.480 our reasoning. Suddenly we start questioning, well, how does this 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:15.960 whole system supposed to work? Uh? And maybe this whole 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:18.840 system doesn't work. Well. Yeah, there are multiple levels of 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:22.080 absurdities in the scene. One is the idea that this 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:24.600 robot is just sort of like coolly telling are two, 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:26.600 that he is going to learn some discipline. But then 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:29.640 the image that accompanies that is like, clearly just like 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:33.840 extreme robot torture, Like it's something way beyond what would 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:36.480 have to do with with discipline in the real world. 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:39.040 But then the other level of absurdity is that it's 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:42.280 robots in the scene, but coming off of the issue 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:46.240 of just like barbaric pirate torture directly and more to 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:51.720 the broader question of robots and discipline and punishment. Uh, 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:53.960 this is something that we actually wanted to talk about 0:03:54.000 --> 0:03:57.800 today because the issue of robot moral and legal agency 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:00.760 is something I've been interested in for a long time. 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:02.720 I've talked about it, It's come up on the show 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:06.320 in the past and in briefer ways, um, and today 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:09.320 I wanted to come back and devote a full episode 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:11.080 to the subject. I guess actually we're gonna be talking 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:13.840 about this for a couple of episodes now. The question 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:19.640 of as machines AI robots become more independent and act 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:23.280 more like agents more like humans do, how are we 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:28.200 to understand their moral and legal culpability when they do 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:31.440 something that harms people? And is there such a thing 0:04:31.520 --> 0:04:36.279 as robot punishment robot discipline? Do these concepts reflect anything 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:39.840 that's achievable in the real world and practical, and if so, 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:42.120 how would any of this work? Yeah? I think one 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:44.599 of the most interesting things about this topic is that 0:04:44.839 --> 0:04:47.520 it does force us to force a face off between 0:04:47.520 --> 0:04:51.120 what robots and ai actually are or will be, and 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:55.440 how we think about them, indeed, how we anthropomorphize them. Um, 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:58.720 And perhaps it might be helpful to take a step 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:02.120 back and think about something far less advanced as a 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:04.520 robot and think something. I think about something more like 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:08.880 a hammer. Okay, so everyone's heard the old adage that 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:11.919 it's a poor carpenter who blames their tools, right, But 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:14.800 of course we do this all the time. Uh, the 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:18.080 hammer slips, it hits our fingers, and we may, at 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:20.680 least in the heat of the moment, blame the hammer 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:23.800 for the failure. Now, we may get over this quickly, 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:26.880 but then again, we may decide that the hammer truly 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:29.640 is at fault and it should be used less. We 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:33.240 might also take this idea to a number of different extremes. 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:35.720 We might decide that the hammer is not merely at 0:05:35.760 --> 0:05:38.880 fault but faulty, and then we're entitled to at least 0:05:38.880 --> 0:05:41.719 a refund for its purchase. Or we might decide that 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:44.680 the hammer needs to actually be punished and and this 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:48.040 of course is ridiculous. And yet the idea of punishing 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:50.440 the hammer by say, putting it in the corner, or 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:53.800 perhaps you have an old toolbox of shame that's just 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:57.559 for the misbehaving tools, or maybe it's it's less thought 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:00.400 out and you just throw the hammer across the yard 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:04.040 as punishment for what it has done to you. Um. Again, 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.920 these are ridiculous things to do, but the idea of 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:08.920 doing them is not that far and from us. Um, 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:10.960 those of you listening, you may have engaged in this 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:13.640 sort of thing as well. You might also simply throw 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:17.599 the tool away and otherwise perfectly good tool. Um. I 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:19.600 know that I did this once with a knife sharpening 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:22.039 gadget that caused me to cut my finger my and 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:25.600 my like reaction was this thing has now injured me, 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.520 it has drawn my blood. Uh, I am, I'm getting 0:06:28.600 --> 0:06:30.359 rid of it. It goes in the trash. It bore 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:33.880 malice against me. Yeah, or you know, I you know 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:36.720 ultimately it's I mean, I mean you you get into 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:39.440 arguments about different tools, like is this a dangerous tool? 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:41.800 And in that case that was my reasoning. It's like 0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:45.360 this tool is dangerous, it's not enabling me to do 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:48.560 what I want to do without drawing blood, so it 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:50.840 goes in the trash um. But then there have been 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:53.800 other cases where like I had a mandolin for slicing 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:57.760 up carrots, and um, I like nicked my finger on it. 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:00.720 But oh I I nicked my fingers A rule they 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:04.000 can be. But I nicked my finger not using it, 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:06.760 but going into the drawer for something else. So I 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:09.279 punished it by putting at the very bottom of the drawer. 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:12.240 But I didn't throw it away. Uh huh. So I 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:14.080 think if we all think, think back, you know, we 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:16.160 have examples of this sort of thing from our from 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:18.680 our life. Well sure, I mean I'm going to talk 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:20.800 in this episode about some of the ways that we 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:26.160 mindlessly apply social rules to robots. But yeah, I think 0:07:26.160 --> 0:07:28.800 what you're illustrating here is that you don't even have 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:32.000 to get to the robot agency stage before people start 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:35.640 doing that. I mean people mindlessly, to a lesser extent, 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:39.840 mindlessly apply social rules and rules derived for managing human 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:44.800 relationships to inanimate objects with no moving parts. Yeah. Yeah, 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:47.200 you don't even have to get into a room ba 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:49.320 or anything, or you know, you can deal with the hammer, 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:52.640 the can opener but we also you know, it's it's 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:55.480 also a sad fact that many pat pet owners will 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:59.560 punish an animal for a transgression, transgression, but scientific evidence 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:03.440 shows that this tends to not actually work at least 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:07.160 in most of the circumstances that it's used. Um so 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:11.960 you know, even it's not merely with with tools and 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:15.320 inanimate objects, but even non human entities were liable to 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:20.280 engage in this kind of discipline based thinking. Now, most 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:22.840 of the studies I think that necessarily relate to dogs 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:25.320 if I remember correctly, And there's a lot going on 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:28.240 here that doesn't relate directly to inanimate objects and robots, 0:08:28.440 --> 0:08:30.760 but it illustrates how we tend to approach the punishment 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:34.199 of other agents and perceived agents. Well, yeah, there's a disconnect, 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:35.920 and this will be highlighted in one of the papers 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:38.160 we're going to talk about in in this pair of episodes, 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:42.600 But there's a disconnect in that punishment is often logically 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:47.040 characterized as serving one type of purpose, but then is 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:50.200 applied more like it serves another type of purpose. So 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:53.920 like it is logically explained as say a deterrent, right, 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:57.120 I mean, if you if you're talking about uh, legal theories, 0:08:57.120 --> 0:08:59.280 of punishment. One of the main things that people come 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:02.040 up with is say, well, the remedy provided by the 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:05.000 law is in order to punish the person who did 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:07.520 the bad thing, in order to send a message that 0:09:07.559 --> 0:09:10.760 people should not do this bad thing and thus maybe 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:13.720 discourage other people from doing something similar in the future, 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:16.679 or discourage the same person from doing it again. And 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:19.280 if it were to actually serve that purpose, it's debatable 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:21.720 in what cases it does actually serve that purpose. Maybe 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:24.280 sometimes it does, but that is a you know, you 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:28.040 could argue that's a rational, logical thing that prevents harm. 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:31.440 But the way punishment is actually often inflicted in the 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:35.400 real world seems to be more consistent with judgments based 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:41.199 on like emotional satisfaction of the idea of having been wronged. Yeah. 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:45.480 And then also we get into this area where, uh, 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:50.360 we have a couple of different factors encouraging traditions of discipline. Um, 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:54.280 particularly if we look at a parenthood, which there's some 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:57.920 crossover between discipline and parents who I didn't discipline and 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:01.640 the criminal justice system. But you know, uh, not everything 0:10:01.720 --> 0:10:04.079 is going to line up one to one here. But um, 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:07.200 on the childhood example, it's benn argue that parents use 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:10.319 punishment first of all, because it's an emotional response out 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:13.720 of anger and anger that may be mismanaged. But then 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:17.800 on top of this, it's, you know, something that's culturally 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:22.400 passed down and punishment may seem to work. I was 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:25.760 reading about this in a Psychology Today article by Michael Carson, 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:29.880 pH d j D. And uh, this is what they said. Quote, 0:10:29.920 --> 0:10:32.560 because the child is inhibited in your presence, it's easy 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:35.880 to think they would be inhibited in your absence. Punishment 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:41.160 produces politeness, not morality. Thus, the inhibited, obedient child inadvertently 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:45.760 reinforces the parents punitive behavior by acting obedient. For the 0:10:45.760 --> 0:10:49.440 sorts of parents who find obedient children reinforcing, Yeah, that 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.280 raises an interesting question. I mean, I've been mainly thinking 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:56.439 for this episode about about legal punishments, but like when 0:10:56.480 --> 0:10:59.120 it comes down to parenting, that's a very different kind 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:03.320 of thing because both parenting in the legal system involved punishment, 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:07.440 but parenting is not subject to a legal system, right, 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:10.680 So there's no there is no systematized way by which 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:13.920 justice is administered from a parent. It's just just I mean, 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:15.280 I think a lot of times it's just sort of 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:17.440 like whatever the parent can manage to do in the 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:21.000 moment because like the kids driving them crazy or something. Yeah, 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:24.079 usually the child can't take it to a higher court, right, 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:26.960 But I mean, I think you're absolutely right that whether 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:30.040 you're talking about discipline administered by a parent or the 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:33.280 justice system as a whole, I'd say that both are 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:38.440 probably based more on tradition and philosophy and less on 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:41.680 a scientifically rigorous study of the most efficient ways to 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:44.960 reduce harm. And one of the interesting things about thinking 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:48.920 about how law could potentially be applied to harm caused 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:52.960 by autonomous machines is that it may help give us 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:56.600 some insights on ways that the justice system as it 0:11:56.640 --> 0:11:59.800 exists and is applied to humans today tends to be 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:04.960 of irrationally already, like with respect to humans. Yeah, and again, 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:08.240 this is what's so interesting about this this paper, I mean, well, 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:10.880 the papers that we're going to discuss this topic in general, though, 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:15.000 is if you start, you start comparing machine possibilities to 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:19.040 human possibilities, and it's on one level of thought experiment 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:21.839 in how you would hold machines are responsible, but then 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:24.560 it makes you rethink the way humans are held responsible. 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:27.280 You know. It's like, um, you might think you have 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:31.000 a pretty square a way, like if if an adult 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:34.280 sells a pack of cigarettes to someone who's underage, right, 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:36.480 but then one of a machine does the same thing, 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:39.080 how do you treat the machine? Do you treat the 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:41.240 machine like an adult? And then in trying to figure 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:43.600 out how to treat this machine, does it make you 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:46.160 rethink how you should be treating the adult who engaged 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:48.520 in this behavior. I don't know, yeah, And I think 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:51.000 a lot of that will come down to our understanding 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:53.880 of what the machine is capable of, like what kind 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:56.920 of constraints it has, what type of what level of 0:12:57.000 --> 0:13:00.600 autonomy it seems to be operating at. I mean, again, Weirdly, 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:03.400 even when people set out to define clear rules for 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:06.439 what makes a machine culpable, there there's still going to 0:13:06.520 --> 0:13:08.760 be a lot of subjectivity in it. I'm I'm looking 0:13:08.800 --> 0:13:13.319 at like legal definitions of what constitutes a robot versus 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:17.640 just a machine, and some of these definitions involved things like, well, 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:21.760 a robot feels like a social agent. So there's still, like, 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:24.560 you know, an element of subjectivity. But I think that's 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:27.040 correct in how we actually apply the term most of 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:30.080 the time, right, Like something is like a gut feeling 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:33.760 about how this machine is behaving in your world. Is 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:37.520 it acting more like a fixed, you know, brainless machine, 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:41.920 or is it acting a little bit more like a person. So, 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:44.840 while it would be one thing if if it were 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:48.360 basically a cigarette vending machine that was selling to children, 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:50.640 but if it were a machine that went door to 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:54.520 door and and rang the doorbell and then asked for 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:56.800 the children so they could sell them cigarettes, that would 0:13:56.800 --> 0:13:58.480 be a different matter. I mean, yeah, I mean I 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:01.920 think that would require different types of remedies. Probably, Yeah, 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:03.800 I mean I think a lot of people would probably 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:06.480 look at the cigarette vending machine and say where was 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:09.240 the vending machine placed? Why was it in a place 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:12.640 that children could have access to it? Rather than attacking 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:15.280 the fundamentals of the machine itself, if it's going door 0:14:15.320 --> 0:14:17.600 to door and giving cigarettes to kids, yeah, then people 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:20.760 are probably going to attack the fundamentals and the moral 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:24.920 character of the robot. You have not attacked the robot itself. 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:34.760 It would just rob justice in somebody's front yard. Yeah, alright, 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:36.400 So I guess I want to introduce one of the 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:38.840 papers we're gonna be looking at in this pair of episodes, 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:42.680 and it is by Mark A. Limley and Brian casey 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:46.920 called Remedies for Robots published in the University of Chicago 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:51.840 Law Review in twenty nineteen. And this is a big paper. 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:54.760 It's like eighty something pages long with a with a 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:57.840 lot of different interesting, uh thoughts in it. We're not 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:00.560 going to be able to cover the entire thing in depth, 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:03.280 but it's worth looking up. You can easily find a 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:05.960 full PDF of it if you want to read it 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:07.800 in depth. And we're gonna look at some of the 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:11.040 larger framework it lays out and then some interesting thoughts 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:13.440 raised to buy it. But to kick it off here 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:17.600 the the author's right quote, what happens when artificially intelligent 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:22.680 robots misbehave? The question is not just hypothetical. As robotics 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:27.320 and artificial intelligence systems increasingly integrate into our society, they 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:30.920 will do bad things. We seek to explore what remedies 0:15:30.960 --> 0:15:33.960 the law can and should provide once a robot has 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:38.000 caused harm. Now, obviously we're going to be focused less 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:41.720 on the like minute particulars of US legal precedent here 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:45.600 and more on the broader issues they raise about robot agency, 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:49.400 robot moral decision making, and how that interacts with harm 0:15:49.600 --> 0:15:53.240 and morality and justice. And the authors start out in 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:55.600 their introduction by giving what I think is a really 0:15:55.640 --> 0:16:00.040 fantastic example of how an autonomous robot with behave of 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:03.120 years guided by machine learning, which is how you know, 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:07.640 increasingly most robots are going to be controlled, can end 0:16:07.680 --> 0:16:10.600 up doing things that are the exact opposite of what 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:13.720 was intended. So this case that they site is based 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:16.840 on a true story from a presentation at the eleventh 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:22.480 annual Stanford e Commerce Best Practices Conference in June, and 0:16:22.520 --> 0:16:27.480 it goes like this quote. Engineers training and artificially intelligent 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:31.440 self flying drone were perplexed. They were trying to get 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:34.840 the drone to stay within a predefined circle and head 0:16:34.880 --> 0:16:38.040 toward its center. Things were going well for a while. 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:42.240 The drone received positive reinforcement for its successful flights, and 0:16:42.280 --> 0:16:45.040 it was improving its ability to navigate toward the middle 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:49.960 quickly and accurately. Then suddenly things changed. When the drone 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:53.040 near the edge of the circle, it would inexplicably turn 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:57.040 away from the center, leaving the circle. What went wrong? 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:00.720 After a long time spent puzzling over the problem, the 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:04.960 designers realized that whenever the drone left the circle during tests, 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:08.359 they had turned it off. Someone would then pick it 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:11.600 up and carry it back into the circle to start again. 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:16.560 From this pattern, the drones algorithm had learned correctly that 0:17:16.640 --> 0:17:19.840 when it was sufficiently far from the center, the optimal 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:22.040 way to get back to the middle was to simply 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:25.840 leave it all together. As far as the drone was concerned, 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:30.320 it had discovered a wormhole somehow, flying outside of the 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:33.760 circle could be relied upon to magically teleport it closer 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:37.280 to the center, and far from violating the rules instilled 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:40.480 in it by its engineers, the drone had actually followed 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:43.600 them to a t. In doing so, however, it had 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:48.520 discovered an unforeseen shortcut, one that subverted its designer's true intent. 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:52.800 That's really good, that's that's it's as a yes, I 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:55.800 love it. This is such a great example of how 0:17:55.960 --> 0:17:59.560 robots can fail in ways that are perfectly logical for 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:03.000 the machine means themselves, but hard for humans to predict 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:06.520 in advance, because we're not understanding how our you know, 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:09.479 our programming or the data sets we're training it on 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:13.320 is biasing its behavior in ways that that are strange 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:15.880 to us. And in this case, of of course, such 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:20.480 a malfunction is harmless, but as autonomous machines become more 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:23.960 and more integrated into the broader culture, not just in 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:28.399 controlled contained locations like factory floors and laboratories, but in 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:31.080 the wild so on the streets and in our homes 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:35.919 and stuff. There will inevitably be cases where robots fail 0:18:36.240 --> 0:18:40.480 like this and fail in ways that cause catastrophic harm 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:43.760 to people. Yeah, and plus as an aside, we we 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:46.040 have to realize that even in cases where the machines 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:48.880 have not failed, there will be gray areas in which 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:51.840 it's not completely clear, and an argument could be made 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:54.760 in these cases for machine culpability with a variety of 0:18:54.800 --> 0:18:58.160 intense and possible biases in place. Oh yeah, that's another 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:00.240 thing these authors talk about that there can be all 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:04.359 kinds of ways that, uh, that robotics and AI could 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:07.920 end up causing extreme harm to people without ever doing 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:10.840 anything that if a human did, it would be illegal. 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:14.920 What one example they give is like if, um, if 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:19.639 Google were to suddenly change its Google Maps algorithm so 0:19:19.720 --> 0:19:24.120 that it routed all of the city's traffic through your neighborhood. Like, 0:19:24.560 --> 0:19:27.679 nothing illegal about that. It doesn't like commit a crime 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:31.400 against you, but this is going to drastically negatively impact 0:19:31.400 --> 0:19:33.800 your quality of life, and it's a decision that's just 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:36.679 like a could be a quirk of an algorithm in 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:40.560 a machine. Now this paper in particular concerns the legal 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:44.520 concept of remedies. So I was reading about remedies. A 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:48.199 common legal definition that I found is quote the means 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:52.000 to achieve justice in any matter in which legal rights 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:55.760 are involved. Or in the words of Limely and Casey, 0:19:55.840 --> 0:19:58.159 what do I get when I win? Right? So, if 0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:00.320 you if you take somebody to court, be as you 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:04.280 say they have harmed you, whatever outcome you're seeking from that, 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:07.960 that court case is the remedy. So usually when a 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:10.639 court case finds that somebody has done something wrong to 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:13.919 harm somebody else, the court responds to the finding of 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:17.520 guilt or blame by enforcing this remedy. And common remedies 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:20.720 would include a payment of money, right, a guilty defendant 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:23.760 has to pay money to the plaintiff, a punishment of 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:26.680 the offender, like maybe they go to jail, or a 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:29.560 court order to do something or not to do something. 0:20:29.680 --> 0:20:32.879 For example, somebody is ordered not to drive a vehicle, 0:20:33.080 --> 0:20:35.240 or they are ordered not to go within a hundred 0:20:35.280 --> 0:20:38.199 feet of somebody else or something like that. Yeah, or 0:20:38.320 --> 0:20:40.879 their their eyeball is removed, or they have to spend 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:43.600 a night in a hunted house something like that. Hopefully 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:46.280 not in modern law. But wait a minute, there are 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:49.400 some Sometimes you do read about some really strange like 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:52.199 remedies that are ordered by judges like I order you 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:54.560 to I don't know, to wear chicken suit or something, 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:58.320 right like, Yeah, there's some judges who like to get creative. 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:01.720 It seems weird. Yeah, I wonder I have There have 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:03.639 been cases where someone has to spend a night and 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:05.720 a hounded house due to a court order. I think 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:07.879 that would be a good setup for a film. But anyway, 0:21:08.200 --> 0:21:10.439 so when you start looking at the idea of remedies, 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:14.600 remedies are complicated because they involve different types of implied 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:18.760 satisfaction on behalf of the victim or plaintiff. And some 0:21:18.880 --> 0:21:22.919 are very clear and material and others are much more abstract. 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:24.720 So the very the ones that are very clear and 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:28.040 material are like, if I hit your car with my 0:21:28.119 --> 0:21:31.080 car and I'm clearly at fault, I need to give 0:21:31.160 --> 0:21:34.440 you a payment of cash to offset the material losses 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:37.080 to the value of your car. Right. But then other 0:21:37.119 --> 0:21:40.399 times it's it's more abstract. It's you know, punishment of 0:21:40.440 --> 0:21:43.800 an offender, to give the victim a sense of justice 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:47.960 or to allegedly discourage someone from committing this type of 0:21:48.000 --> 0:21:50.719 harm or offense in the future. And then the authors 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:53.480 right that things get way more complicated when you bring 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:57.480 robots and AI into the picture. For example, if you're 0:21:57.480 --> 0:21:59.919 trying to give a court order to a person, you know, 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:02.680 saying like you shall not drive a car, you shall 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:05.080 not you know, come within a hundred feet of this person. 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:07.600 You can do so in natural language. You can like 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:10.480 speak a sentence to them and you can expect them 0:22:10.520 --> 0:22:13.879