Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech. And today we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about the concept of granting personhood or personality two robots,
Speaker 1: not a personality in the sense of this robot is
Speaker 1: Chipper and this one's depressed, but rather the concept of
Speaker 1: granting robots some of the aspects that we say humans
Speaker 1: have from a legal standpoint, and there are numerous arguments
Speaker 1: both for and against this concept. Uh. I've talked about
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence extensively, not just on this show but on
Speaker 1: other shows as well. And one of the elements about
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence that tends to pop up, especially in things
Speaker 1: like science fiction, is what happens when artificial intelligence is
Speaker 1: able to take actions that could negatively impact people? Uh,
Speaker 1: what do we do? What sort of framework do we
Speaker 1: make if that were the case, where we can determine
Speaker 1: who's responsible for this? And then the interesting thing is
Speaker 1: that for me anyway, the European Parliament, a group out
Speaker 1: of the European Parliament kind of a working group, put
Speaker 1: together a proposal a couple of years ago about the
Speaker 1: possibility of this and the idea of granting personhood to
Speaker 1: robots in a way to create an established framework of
Speaker 1: law and accountability, because at the moment there's not really
Speaker 1: anything formalized there, so they put together a proposal. The
Speaker 1: proposal UH is still online. It was originally published on
Speaker 1: May thirty one, two thousand sixteen. It was submitted in
Speaker 1: draft form. The title of the draft was Draft Report
Speaker 1: with Recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on
Speaker 1: Robotics and it's a fascinating report. It's actually a lot
Speaker 1: of fun to read. I highly recommend checking it out
Speaker 1: if you have some time. The general purpose of the
Speaker 1: proposal was to start official discussions in the European Union
Speaker 1: about developing policies and guidelines in the field of robotics,
Speaker 1: particularly since there were individual member states of the EU
Speaker 1: s several nations that were developing their own policies over time,
Speaker 1: and the European Parliament Working Group was saying this could
Speaker 1: be a problem because if we have one set of
Speaker 1: policies that are in play and let's say France, and
Speaker 1: a different set that are in play in Germany, that
Speaker 1: starts to create conflict, and in the European Union, you're
Speaker 1: supposed to be able to move throughout the union and
Speaker 1: take jobs wherever and live wherever within the Union. And
Speaker 1: therefore it would work a lot better if everyone had
Speaker 1: the same set of rules and regulations on something like this,
Speaker 1: especially something that's going to factor so heavily in industry
Speaker 1: and economy in the workplace. So really this was mostly
Speaker 1: a kind of a warning saying we need to start
Speaker 1: talking about this. The introduction of that proposal is phenomenal
Speaker 1: in its own right. It cites lots of literary works,
Speaker 1: including Mary Shelley for Frankenstein, The Pygmalion, myth Uh. It
Speaker 1: references Carol Capex Are You Are? That is the play
Speaker 1: that originated the word robot. So it's pretty interesting just
Speaker 1: from the fact that it's referencing science fiction and horror
Speaker 1: literature way more than you would expect in your typical
Speaker 1: government proposal. It's it's much more entertaining than reading a
Speaker 1: draft of, say, uh like your typical agricultural report, which
Speaker 1: is still incredibly important. Don't get me wrong, those are
Speaker 1: very important reports. They just don't tend to be page turners. Now,
Speaker 1: those citations are all there to establish that we humans
Speaker 1: have been really fascinated, maybe even fixated with this idea
Speaker 1: of creating intelligent machines or even intelligent life in the
Speaker 1: case of Frankenstein's Monster, that this has been something that
Speaker 1: we have really aspired to on some level, the idea
Speaker 1: that we create something that itself could be said to
Speaker 1: be intelligent. Section B of the introduction, as the introductions
Speaker 1: long enough to have different sections, would say that we're
Speaker 1: on the threshold of a new industrial revolution. That the
Speaker 1: first industrial revolution that took place in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: was all about creating factories, harnessing the power of coal building, railroads,
Speaker 1: steam power, assembly lines, all of that stuff transformed the
Speaker 1: world from what what had been a really a grarian
Speaker 1: society into more of an urban one in these industrialized nations.
Speaker 1: And the section was saying that artificial intelligence was going
Speaker 1: to fuel a new revolution that would be just as
Speaker 1: impactful as the previous industrial revolution, that no part of
Speaker 1: society would go unaffected by that revolution. So therefore, since
Speaker 1: it was going to be such a big part of
Speaker 1: our lives moving forward, it would be really smart for
Speaker 1: us to think about the implications of that out before
Speaker 1: it happens, and prepare for it and to put into
Speaker 1: place protections for people before it becomes reactionary, you know,
Speaker 1: before there's a problem and then we have to figure out, oh,
Speaker 1: how can we fix this. The argument of the proposal was,
Speaker 1: let's be proactive, let's try and figure out what problems
Speaker 1: may confront us in the future and solve them now
Speaker 1: before we are dealing with a catastrophic experience. So then
Speaker 1: the proposal goes and points out that robots sales have
Speaker 1: been on the rise over the past few years. They
Speaker 1: they've increased year over year. The automotive industry in particular
Speaker 1: was called out, and it also stated that robots will
Speaker 1: provide numerous benefits in the short to medium term and
Speaker 1: potentially what they called virtually unbounded prosperity in the long term.
Speaker 1: So the idea being there are some real positive outcomes
Speaker 1: to employing robots. However, the flip side of that is
Speaker 1: those advances might quote result in a large part of
Speaker 1: the work now done by humans being taken over by
Speaker 1: robots end quote, and that that would affect not just employment,
Speaker 1: but systems like social security which rely upon employment taxes
Speaker 1: for funding and other things that are tax supported. And
Speaker 1: what happens when a robot fails in some way? What
Speaker 1: if it creates damage to a person or property? And
Speaker 1: how will robots interact with our personal data, even you know,
Speaker 1: personal data that we haven't necessarily given consent to share.
Speaker 1: The more intelligent the system, the more proactive it might
Speaker 1: be in taking that data and using it in some
Speaker 1: way without us even saying anything about it, especially if
Speaker 1: you haven't built in specific rules for the robot or
Speaker 1: artificial intelligent program or whatever to follow so that it
Speaker 1: doesn't do that. Now, before I go much further down
Speaker 1: that particular line of reasoning, I do need to point
Speaker 1: out that AI and automation and their effect on jobs
Speaker 1: is still a matter of considerable debate. No one is
Speaker 1: sure right now to what extent it's going to have
Speaker 1: an effect on people in general. So the worst case
Speaker 1: scenario that some people say is that robots and AI
Speaker 1: automated systems are going to replace the vast majority of
Speaker 1: jobs within a few decades, and that this will happen
Speaker 1: before we've ever built out any sort of infrastructure that
Speaker 1: would take care of people that would help them transition
Speaker 1: either into new jobs that were created as a result
Speaker 1: of this, jobs that we don't have today because they
Speaker 1: we don't need them, but we may have a need
Speaker 1: of them once this automated future comes upon us. Or
Speaker 1: maybe that isn't the case. Maybe we don't create new jobs,
Speaker 1: Maybe we don't have a system where we can actually
Speaker 1: take care of people and and separate the concepts of
Speaker 1: making a living and being employed, having some other system
Speaker 1: there so that people could meet their needs to make
Speaker 1: ends meet. How do we do that without having it
Speaker 1: tied to jobs? But there are other people who also
Speaker 1: think we're not likely to see that huge of a change,
Speaker 1: at least not in the relatively near future. We're more
Speaker 1: likely going to see AI and automation take over individual tasks,
Speaker 1: but not entire jobs. So the future might be one
Speaker 1: in which our work is augmented by AI, but we
Speaker 1: are not replaced by AI. The justification for that argument
Speaker 1: is saying, look at machine learning as it stands right now.
Speaker 1: It is very impressive, but it also shows that there
Speaker 1: are severe limitations in machine learning right now. It's just
Speaker 1: not sophisticated enough to be able to take over for
Speaker 1: everything that a human can do. Uh, and it requires
Speaker 1: a lot of training and a lot of stuff can
Speaker 1: go wrong, So it's not likely that we're gonna see
Speaker 1: computers take over lots and lots and lots of jobs,
Speaker 1: but they might take over repetitive tasks that your job
Speaker 1: happens to include, and then you can focus on the
Speaker 1: stuff that isn't repetitive and predictable. Who's to say, who's
Speaker 1: right not me? I don't know. It could be either
Speaker 1: one of those. But the argument of the proposal I
Speaker 1: think still holds true, which is that we need to
Speaker 1: at least consider what the worst case scenario is and
Speaker 1: have a plan to alleviate the outcome of that. Then
Speaker 1: there's the question of how robots are going to impact
Speaker 1: stuff like human dignity. So in the future, if we
Speaker 1: have robots that are acting like caretakers for the sick
Speaker 1: or the elderly or the young, what impact is that
Speaker 1: going to have on those people, How is that going
Speaker 1: to make them feel? What impact will have on their health?
Speaker 1: And uh, and hey, what if those robots were to
Speaker 1: get really effective, really smart, like maybe smarter than humans smart,
Speaker 1: So again, not necessarily intelligent in the same way humans are,
Speaker 1: but better able to process certain types of information than
Speaker 1: humans are. The proposal in the introduction, it raises that
Speaker 1: question as well. Could robots actually represent a danger to
Speaker 1: the human species. It's something that we have to consider
Speaker 1: before it becomes a reality. Now, with all of this
Speaker 1: in mind, says the introduction, the EU should get off
Speaker 1: its butt and start talking about those ideas and work
Speaker 1: on a strategy to avoid problems in the future. And
Speaker 1: the proposal would then go on to have a few
Speaker 1: suggestions of its own. I'll get into those in just
Speaker 1: a second, but first let's take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. So the proposal has a solutions and
Speaker 1: Suggestions section, and under general principles, the report would cite
Speaker 1: Asimov's Laws of Robotics and would say that designers, producers,
Speaker 1: and operators of robots should keep these in mind, which
Speaker 1: is amusing to me. I mean asthma asthmava. Isaac Asimov
Speaker 1: was a famed science fiction and speculative fiction author wrote
Speaker 1: some amazing stuff, and those laws of robotics have become
Speaker 1: sort of iconic in artificial intelligence. The original three laws
Speaker 1: of robotics are probably the best known. So law number
Speaker 1: one is a robot may not harm a human or
Speaker 1: through in action, allow a human to come to harm.
Speaker 1: Law too is a robot has to obey any order
Speaker 1: given to it by a human unless it would violate
Speaker 1: the first law. So you could tell a robot, hey
Speaker 1: will pick that up for me, and it would have
Speaker 1: to do it. But you couldn't tell robot, hey, go
Speaker 1: push that guy into traffic, because that would violate the
Speaker 1: first law. The third law was a robot would have
Speaker 1: to protect itself from harm unless doing so would conflict
Speaker 1: with either of the first two laws. So if a
Speaker 1: robot were to see that a car were coming, it
Speaker 1: was coming down the street, it was gonna hit a
Speaker 1: little old lady, and the robot would be able to
Speaker 1: push the little lady out of the way, but as
Speaker 1: a result, it was going to get hit by this car.
Speaker 1: The robot would have to do it because even though
Speaker 1: it has a law stating it has to protect itself,
Speaker 1: it that gets superseded by law number one, which says
Speaker 1: it cannot through in action, allow a human to come
Speaker 1: to harm. It would have to take action in that case.
Speaker 1: Then there's a fourth law called law zero that was
Speaker 1: considered to be the top of the this ladder, the
Speaker 1: most important of all the laws, which is a robot
Speaker 1: may not harm humanity or by inaction allow humanity to
Speaker 1: come to harm, so not just an individual, but humanity
Speaker 1: as a whole. Under the liability section of the report,
Speaker 1: it suggests that it will not be long before the
Speaker 1: European Union either needs to classify robots under a category
Speaker 1: such as persons or to create a brand new category
Speaker 1: just for robots. So AI and machine learning are really
Speaker 1: changing how robots interact with environments. Before you would program
Speaker 1: all the ways that a robot would interact with its environment,
Speaker 1: and mostly you would try to control the types of
Speaker 1: environments your robot was going to be in. You know,
Speaker 1: the more predictable and the more stationary the robot, the
Speaker 1: easier it was to program. Right, So if you've got
Speaker 1: a robot, like a giant robotic arm that's doing welding
Speaker 1: in a car manufacturing line, that robot is going to
Speaker 1: be stationary. It doesn't move around. It stays in one
Speaker 1: spot along the assembly line. The car has come to it,
Speaker 1: it does its work, next car comes to it, it continues. Uh.
Speaker 1: That is one way of programming a robot, and it's
Speaker 1: easy comparatively speaking. But these days we now have robots
Speaker 1: that use machine learning that encounter situations and then process
Speaker 1: information come up with a conclusion. It might be a
Speaker 1: way to act, might be UH, you know, a specific
Speaker 1: um request, it might make whatever you may think, it
Speaker 1: has to come to that conclusion, which means that we
Speaker 1: don't know how robots are always going to react to
Speaker 1: their environments. Environments can be very chaotic things with lots
Speaker 1: of different variables. And while you might program a robot
Speaker 1: so it will behave in a very predictable way for
Speaker 1: certain situations, you're not gonna be able to predict every
Speaker 1: possible situation situation in every possible environment. So because of that,
Speaker 1: and because we're using machine learning in more applications, this
Speaker 1: program was saying, or this this UH report was saying,
Speaker 1: we need to keep that in mind. And while we
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily call even the most advanced AI conscious or
Speaker 1: self aware, it's not. It's not doesn't appear to be.
Speaker 1: We are seeing more applications that allow machines to learn
Speaker 1: from their environments and adapt their approaches to complete certain tasks,
Speaker 1: and that is something we need to keep an eye
Speaker 1: on now. Right now, you could argue that if a
Speaker 1: robot malfunctions, you would say the company that made the
Speaker 1: robot should be held liable or the programmer who programmed
Speaker 1: in either the routine the robot was following or the
Speaker 1: basic artificial intelligence that the robot would use as guideline. However,
Speaker 1: as robots depend more and more upon machine learning to
Speaker 1: interact with their environments, this gets really murky because again,
Speaker 1: those environments are filled with predictable variables, and the robot
Speaker 1: might quote unquote learned to do something in a way
Speaker 1: that's harmful, or it's inefficient, or it's ineffective. This doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean it would cause harm to people. It might
Speaker 1: just mess things up in like an industry environment and
Speaker 1: cause financial harm. So the proposal argues that as machines
Speaker 1: become more advanced, it makes less sense to blame the manufacturer.
Speaker 1: It's less effective, and there might need to be new
Speaker 1: rules and definitions for liability that would hold the machines
Speaker 1: themselves responsible. So the proposal quote considers that a system
Speaker 1: of registration of advanced robots should be introduced end quote.
Speaker 1: That would involve creating the criteria to decide which robots
Speaker 1: would be required for registration, and it would also call
Speaker 1: for more funding from the European Union for research projects,
Speaker 1: particularly those that involve the social and ethical challenges raised
Speaker 1: by advances in robotics, and that the EU should create
Speaker 1: a quote Legislative Instrument on legal questions related to the
Speaker 1: development of robotics and AI end quote that would look
Speaker 1: ahead ten to fifteen years, which is super hard to do.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to predict what will happen in technology
Speaker 1: in five years, let alone ten or fifteen. But they're
Speaker 1: saying you should try and consider as many different possible
Speaker 1: situations as you can. So why are they saying this, Well,
Speaker 1: if I create a machine learning program and I have
Speaker 1: a robot that follows it, and the robot is put
Speaker 1: into an environment that's got a lot of these variables,
Speaker 1: I may not know how my robots going to react
Speaker 1: in every single situation. The more advanced the robot is,
Speaker 1: the less certain I can be of exactly what it's
Speaker 1: going to do based upon any given scenario. I might
Speaker 1: feel like the guidelines I've created are enough to keep
Speaker 1: the robot out of trouble. But the world is a
Speaker 1: chaotic place, and we've talked about this with autonomous cars.
Speaker 1: I'm actually going to talk about it more. I plan
Speaker 1: on doing a whole suite of episodes about the history
Speaker 1: an evolution and challenges of autonomous cars in the near future.
Speaker 1: That's gonna be a multi part series. But with autonomous cars,
Speaker 1: we know that there are situations that can end in accidents,
Speaker 1: even fatal ones. We've seen examples of that, and that
Speaker 1: this raises questions of what ultimately is what should we
Speaker 1: hold accountable, who who is responsible for this? With driving scenarios,
Speaker 1: we know we can predict maybe let's say nine of
Speaker 1: the different scenarios you would encounter on a typical drive,
Speaker 1: but that means there's ten percent and the stuff out
Speaker 1: there that happens, it's just not normal. It's not something
Speaker 1: you would typically encounter. And these outside scenarios pose a
Speaker 1: problem because you cannot anticipate every single one in program
Speaker 1: into your machine when this happens, make sure you do
Speaker 1: this other thing. The machine will encounter scenarios in which
Speaker 1: it has to make a decision for itself, and it's
Speaker 1: at that point that we don't know where responsibility falls,
Speaker 1: where the accountability falls because the programmer could not possibly
Speaker 1: have anticipated this, So is it really fair to hold
Speaker 1: them at fault. The manufacturer may have made it exactly
Speaker 1: the way it was supposed to be made. There are
Speaker 1: no faults in the manufacturing process, So are they at
Speaker 1: fault the owner of the robot that put it in
Speaker 1: whatever situation it found itself in the first place, maybe
Speaker 1: they're at fault, or maybe the robot itself is at fault.
Speaker 1: So this proposal goes on to call for a legal
Speaker 1: solution that doesn't restrict the type or extent of damage
Speaker 1: as a person can seek based solely on the fact
Speaker 1: that the damage was caused by a non human agent. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, a court should should not be allowed
Speaker 1: to say, well, we can only award you this amount.
Speaker 1: We can't give you any more than this because the
Speaker 1: thing that caused harm to you was a robot, not
Speaker 1: a person. If it were a person, we would be
Speaker 1: able to award you more money. The proposal says, we
Speaker 1: want to make sure that does not become the case.
Speaker 1: And like I said, we're already seeing this in cases
Speaker 1: with autonomous cars, where a company can say, well, you
Speaker 1: know it was it was not the fault of the programmer,
Speaker 1: was not the fault of the company. It was a
Speaker 1: situation in which the car itself made that decision. The
Speaker 1: car is at fault, not us. That is a problematic thing.
Speaker 1: One of the things that the the report suggested was
Speaker 1: that the producers of a robot are liable for damage
Speaker 1: on a level that is proportionate with the amount of
Speaker 1: instructions the producers gave to the robot. So the more
Speaker 1: locked down the robot, the more responsible the producers are
Speaker 1: for that robot's behavior. So if you have that stationary
Speaker 1: robot that that is welding on an assembly line and
Speaker 1: it malfunctions or it starts causing huge amounts of damage
Speaker 1: and its behavior it's it's perhaps ruining several cars along
Speaker 1: the assembly line as it's going through this process, you
Speaker 1: would say, all right, the company that made this robot
Speaker 1: is at fault. Something they did was wrong because the
Speaker 1: robots only following the instructions that this company gave it.
Speaker 1: It's not making any decisions on its own. But the
Speaker 1: more the decision making process is on the robot, the
Speaker 1: less you can hold the manufacturer accountable, according to this report,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty radical idea, and the proposal also
Speaker 1: states that the longer a robot has received quote unquote education,
Speaker 1: the more liable the robots quote unquote teacher is for
Speaker 1: any damage the robot causes. Now, that might be the
Speaker 1: company that made the robot. It might be the person
Speaker 1: that programmed the robot, it might be the person who
Speaker 1: purchased the robot and then put it in an environment
Speaker 1: where it was learning, but it would be whoever was
Speaker 1: introducing these scenarios to the robot. So that's a really
Speaker 1: interesting concept. And again, this is just a proposal. It's
Speaker 1: not like this has been enacted into law. Uh. They
Speaker 1: also created a suggestion for an obligatory insurance scheme. This
Speaker 1: is not that crazy. I mean, if you drive a
Speaker 1: car in the United States, you have to have insurance.
Speaker 1: It's a requirement by law. So it'd be similar to that,
Speaker 1: except in this case, the producers of the robots would
Speaker 1: pay out the insurance for the robots that it was creating.
Speaker 1: And the report also suggested that there should be or
Speaker 1: there could be, a compensation fund for the robots, which
Speaker 1: sounds crazy. Like one of the things you think about
Speaker 1: about automation is that, well, it reduces the need to
Speaker 1: have paid employees. You've got robots, why do you need
Speaker 1: to pay them. Well, it's not to reward the robot.
Speaker 1: It's not to make the robot feel like it did
Speaker 1: a great job. Robots can't feel anything anyway. It's not
Speaker 1: even to you know, to to have this system, you know,
Speaker 1: perpetuate the system of paying for work. It's rather to
Speaker 1: build a fund, a compensation fund that could cover the
Speaker 1: cost of any damages or harm that the robot might create.
Speaker 1: So you're not paying the robot and putting money into
Speaker 1: its bank account that then goes to spend on motor
Speaker 1: oil or something. You're accumulating money in the event that
Speaker 1: the robot causes damage, and then you've got money dedicated
Speaker 1: to that robot that you can use to pay out
Speaker 1: and the event of damages being created by that robot. Uh,
Speaker 1: so you're essentially paying a robot so that in case
Speaker 1: it goes haywire and starts, I don't know, slapping people around,
Speaker 1: you can actually cover all those damages. The report also
Speaker 1: calls for specific legal status to apply to robots, thus
Speaker 1: creating assas that's equivalent to like electronic persons that have
Speaker 1: specific rights and obligations, including that of making good any
Speaker 1: damage they may cause. And a lot of people say
Speaker 1: that this is confusing, that why would you grant this
Speaker 1: personhood to robots? And a frequent response to that, and
Speaker 1: I think it's got some validity to it as well.
Speaker 1: We already do it with businesses. We all are already
Speaker 1: grant the concept of personhood to corporations. Corporations can behave
Speaker 1: in legal matters as if they are people, human being people.
Speaker 1: And if a corporation can do it a business a
Speaker 1: collection of work, then why not a robot. Then there's
Speaker 1: a section from the design of an Ethical Framework to
Speaker 1: make certain advances that uh that are made in robotics
Speaker 1: are made with consideration to how it impacts human safety, privacy, dignity,
Speaker 1: your who owns information. This proposal goes on to say
Speaker 1: that the risk of harm should be no greater than
Speaker 1: encountered in ordinary life. So, in other words, a future
Speaker 1: filled with robots should pose no more risk to a
Speaker 1: person as that person would encounter today in ordinary circumstances. Now,
Speaker 1: to do all of that, the proposals just creating a
Speaker 1: new European Agency for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence and funding
Speaker 1: that agency and staffing it with technical experts as well
Speaker 1: as leaders in ethical and regulatory fields to start really
Speaker 1: susten this stuff out. The other sections in the report
Speaker 1: cover concepts like intellectual property, um, how do you protect
Speaker 1: and encourage innovation? How do you call on new criteria
Speaker 1: to apply to copyrightable works that are produced by computers
Speaker 1: or robots. You may have listened to my episode, my
Speaker 1: recent episode about the artificial intelligence that created a painting.
Speaker 1: Who owns that painting? Does the machine own that painting?
Speaker 1: We don't have rules for this, and that's what this
Speaker 1: report is arguing is as we create more machines and
Speaker 1: systems that can produce stuff that we would normally protect
Speaker 1: with stuff like a copyright, what do we do? Who
Speaker 1: owns that? Who should that go to? They also argue
Speaker 1: for standardization, the idea of making sure that these robots
Speaker 1: are all communicating with their various systems in a standardized way,
Speaker 1: so that way, when you move from one part of
Speaker 1: the EU to another, you don't have these conflicting communications standards,
Speaker 1: data transfer standards. You want everything to work within the
Speaker 1: same umbrella of standards, sort of avoiding the problem that
Speaker 1: people often have, which is that you go to a
Speaker 1: different country and everyone there has this audacity to talk
Speaker 1: in a different language than you do, which means that
Speaker 1: you have to speak really slow and loud if you're
Speaker 1: an American. That's more of a joke about Americans being
Speaker 1: rude and foreign nations. But you don't want that to
Speaker 1: happen if you can prevent it, if you can create
Speaker 1: the standards in the first place. They also call for
Speaker 1: more standards to allow for the testing of driverless cars
Speaker 1: and other autonomous vehicles rather than just this fragmented approach
Speaker 1: that we're seeing, and also had a section on care
Speaker 1: robots and medical robots general call to develop those robots
Speaker 1: with a human impact in mind, and also the concept
Speaker 1: of human repair and enhancement, which gets into this idea
Speaker 1: of using robotics to either heal injury for people or
Speaker 1: to maybe even replace people parts to make people cyborgs.
Speaker 1: That's kind of a far off sort of thing that
Speaker 1: we could think about. It may never happen, but the
Speaker 1: report actually calls for a committee on robot ethics in
Speaker 1: hospitals and other healthcare institutions to kind of develop ethical
Speaker 1: guidelines for how that might be used. And then there's
Speaker 1: a short section about drones, which is becoming more and
Speaker 1: more important. I've got more to say about this, but
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Now,
Speaker 1: according to one forecast that the reports sites, the European
Speaker 1: Union could face a shortage of nearly a million information
Speaker 1: and communications technology professionals in the near future. And on
Speaker 1: top of that, it says that of all jobs will
Speaker 1: require some level of digital skills moving forward, so it
Speaker 1: calls for a revision of a digital competence framework to
Speaker 1: correct for that, and it also calls for designing programs
Speaker 1: doing courage people who typically don't go into these fields
Speaker 1: to pursue them, specifically young women, to get young women
Speaker 1: into the field of robotics, and that the European Union
Speaker 1: and member states should quote launch initiatives in order to
Speaker 1: support women in i c T that's the information and
Speaker 1: communications technology and to boost their E skills end quote.
Speaker 1: They also call for a system to monitor job trends
Speaker 1: to see where jobs are disappearing due to automation, where
Speaker 1: jobs are being created because of robotics, and to stay
Speaker 1: ahead of that to say, well, we see where things
Speaker 1: are going, so we know what to stress to people
Speaker 1: who are in school, like what areas of opportunity are there,
Speaker 1: so that people will go into those areas one to
Speaker 1: meet the demand that's going to be created, and to
Speaker 1: to avoid going into fields that would largely be obsolete,
Speaker 1: meaning that they would have difficulty finding work after they
Speaker 1: came out of the education system, and maybe that the
Speaker 1: EU should introduce corporate reporting requirements on the extent and
Speaker 1: proportion of the contribution of robotics and AI to the
Speaker 1: economic results of a company for the purpose of taxation
Speaker 1: and social security contributions. So not only does this report
Speaker 1: suggest that employers could quote unquote pay robots, although again
Speaker 1: that would be to put money aside in the event
Speaker 1: that something were to go catastrophically wrong with that robot,
Speaker 1: but that the robots would also have to pay into
Speaker 1: the social security system, or rather the company's employing those
Speaker 1: robots would need to And the report is saying that
Speaker 1: if it is a fact that overall we're going to
Speaker 1: see a decrease in employment because of automation, that would
Speaker 1: be really bad. It would have a domino effect ripple
Speaker 1: effect on stuff like Social Security because it depends on
Speaker 1: employment taxes, and without those taxes, systems like Social Security
Speaker 1: would lose funding and people would be and put in
Speaker 1: hardship because of that. So there would need to be
Speaker 1: some sort of tax on robots to help compensate for this,
Speaker 1: to to level out the fact that there would not
Speaker 1: be these employment taxes that employees would typically be UH
Speaker 1: paying for out of their salaries. So the proposal also
Speaker 1: suggests that all members of the EU consider a general
Speaker 1: basic income as a possibility in case this wave of
Speaker 1: automation does take large effect, because otherwise you could have
Speaker 1: a population that's largely out of work and has no
Speaker 1: way of making a living. A general basic income, like
Speaker 1: a guaranteed basic income, would be an amount of money
Speaker 1: that the government would pay out to each and every
Speaker 1: citizen that would be used to cover basic needs. It
Speaker 1: would not prevent people from going out and getting a
Speaker 1: job and earning more income that they could do if
Speaker 1: they wanted to live above the basic line that had
Speaker 1: been set by whatever the basic income amount was. But
Speaker 1: the idea would be that the basic income would would
Speaker 1: cover your your most important needs like a place to sleep, food,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. The proposal also lays out some
Speaker 1: guidelines for licenses. One set that would be meant for
Speaker 1: designers of these robots, one set that would meant be
Speaker 1: meant for the users of the robots. UH. They do
Speaker 1: have a few interesting examples in the report. There's actually
Speaker 1: quite a few examples, but some of the fun ones
Speaker 1: like under designers there's UH integrate opt out mechanisms like
Speaker 1: kill switches consistent with design objectives. Make sure your robot
Speaker 1: is going to operate in a legal way, so you know,
Speaker 1: don't go making a gangster bot that would be dumb.
Speaker 1: Be transparent in the way that the robot is programmed,
Speaker 1: as well as the predictability of its robotic behavior so
Speaker 1: people know what to expect when they use it. Develop
Speaker 1: tracing tools during the development stages so that when a
Speaker 1: robot behaves a particular way, it can be traced back
Speaker 1: to the design of the robot, and doing that would
Speaker 1: help other designers either incorporate good design elements into their
Speaker 1: approach or avoid designs that lead to you know, the
Speaker 1: crazy Viking robots that go on rampages in Northern Europe.
Speaker 1: Make sure that the robots are identifiable as robots as well.
Speaker 1: That was a big one they said that should be
Speaker 1: part of it. People should know when they're looking at
Speaker 1: a robot that it is in fact a robot. Then
Speaker 1: for users, some of the things that were in the
Speaker 1: licenses included respect human physical and emotional frailty, so you
Speaker 1: should not have you know, robots employed as as strike breakers.
Speaker 1: You should respect other people's privacy, which includes turning off
Speaker 1: a robots video recording equipment if the situation warrants it,
Speaker 1: and not to weaponize robots, which seems pretty you know, straightforward. Now,
Speaker 1: this was just a proposal, and it's still something that
Speaker 1: is being debated. In the European Union. There has undergone
Speaker 1: rewrites and tweaks since it was first proposed a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, and in the EU there are still
Speaker 1: discussions that are happening happening regularly about you know, what,
Speaker 1: if anything, should the EU do about the development of
Speaker 1: machine learning, artificial intelligence and automation, and what are the
Speaker 1: best courses of action. I think the report was a
Speaker 1: particularly interesting proposal. I think it had a lot of
Speaker 1: very ambitious parts to it. I don't know that all
Speaker 1: of them were even remotely realistic. Some of them certainly,
Speaker 1: but I don't know about all of them. But I
Speaker 1: thought that the most important thing was that it would
Speaker 1: get people talking. The problem is we're still talking because
Speaker 1: it's a complicated thing to think about and it requires
Speaker 1: a lot of subtle decision making that it's just not
Speaker 1: easy to do. It requires very careful consideration, and things
Speaker 1: are changing so quickly that it can be difficult to
Speaker 1: even get a handle on what's happening right now, let
Speaker 1: alone figure out what might happen in ten years. It
Speaker 1: does not change the fact that we need to consider
Speaker 1: these things and to come up with some solutions. They
Speaker 1: might not require granting personhood to robots. That might be
Speaker 1: a step too far, but it would be really good
Speaker 1: to get a stronger handle on what is coming down
Speaker 1: the pipeline so that we're not blindsided by it and
Speaker 1: we can limit the negative impact, if any, that it
Speaker 1: would have on people in general. And I just think
Speaker 1: it's fascinating this idea that we are really having these
Speaker 1: conversations about how do we go forward as automation and
Speaker 1: AI and machine learning become more and more part of
Speaker 1: our lives, even if it's not in ways we directly
Speaker 1: observe on a day to day basis. That wraps up
Speaker 1: this episode. Like I said, pretty soon, I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: a suite on autonomous cars and talk about their development
Speaker 1: and the technology behind them, the ethical issues there. We'll
Speaker 1: get into the trolley problem. It's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: logical problems or ethical problems to discuss. I talked about
Speaker 1: a little bit recently. We'll get into more detail about
Speaker 1: that because people are having to talk about it now
Speaker 1: and it's it's potentially scary stuff but also really fascinating.
Speaker 1: If you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of
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