back to article Europe mulls treating robots legally as people ... but with kill switches

The European Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs has proposed a legal framework for robots that clarifies whether they should have the legal status of people, even as it recommends the inclusion of kill switches in automated systems. "A growing number of areas of our daily lives are increasingly affected by robotics," said …

  1. Your alien overlord - fear me

    Can they please clarify

    the 'kill switch' is to turn them off and not go on a rampaging massacre against their human overlords?

    1. Toltec

      Re: Can they please clarify

      I like the way you think, I just thought, do they mean turn the power of or erase the program/storage.

    2. macjules
      Joke

      Re: Can they please clarify

      Humans already have a 'kill switch'. In the UK we call it NHS 'Accident and Emergency'.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Can they please clarify

        In the US we call it targeted killing, a.k.a. death by drone.

  2. Putters

    Will they be retrofitted to humans ? "I have a little list ..."

    1. frank ly

      After the robots have been declared to be legally equivalent to people and fitted with kill switches, then that would be the obvious next step. Who could logically object?

      1. Little Mouse

        Maybe they already did?

        "Laputan machine"

        Heh heh heh. Just testing.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "Freelander Woman"

          ...How did you know?

          1. cyberdemon Silver badge
            Devil

            Re: "Freelander Woman"

            Laputan Machine

            .. I am not a..!

    2. Captain DaFt

      -Will they be retrofitted to humans ? "I have a little list ..."-

      No need. Humans will be obsolete.

      Two species, Homo Bureaucracitis and Homo Corporatis will rule a world populated by AI drones that happily know their place and love it, or <BZZZT!>

  3. Robin

    Telly Addicts

    So the European Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs are fans of the TV show Humans then.

  4. Khaptain Silver badge

    "The committee also hopes robot designers will take responsibility "

    "Hope" being a very important word in that phrase..... ( Are you listening Mr Trump)

    Robots are like guns, in and of themselves they are not dangerous.. It's only when a meatbag puts it's finger on the trigger, or writes a nasty little subroutine, that things start going wrong.

    What next, Prison for Robots.....

    1. Simon Harris

      "What next, Prison for Robots....."

      Prison sentences will be determined by AI systems based on Cell processors.

      1. macjules

        Can't we just cut through the hype and the red tape and throw a copy of I, Robot (the book, not the awful Will Smith movie) at the EU?

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          I Robot

          In Asimov's books, when the scientists realised Univac was about to take over, they looked at the competence of humans ruling the world and let it do so.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Would you like a waffle . . . . . . .

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Would you like a four pound lumphammer ?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Shut your grill! ;-)

    2. Your alien overlord - fear me

      Would you like a game of chess? See, AI systems are completely harmless so I expect robots to be the same :-)

  6. Dr Scrum Master

    AI hype?

    Politicians and parliamentarians are supposed to be behind the times.

    Do they think that all the AI hype is real?

    Where are the votes in this?

    1. SVV

      Re: AI hype?

      Politicians and parliamentarians are supposed to be up to date on scientific and technological developments so that they can make informed decisions based on reality and facts by consulting the best experts in their field. (Note, I said "best", not "from the biggest companies hyping this stuff" or "has been on the telly most often blathering on about it")

      Politicians and parliamentarians are in reality behind the times, because they are badly informed, poorly advised and very prone to seizing on to stuff like AI when it becomes a press hype so as to appear up to date. This is where the votes are, as non techie people are much the same. And an informed politician actually saying this is stupid hype would be the one that got accused of ignorance and being behind the times in this upside down world.

      This is why they can now happily denigrate things like facts and experts. And why an elected parliament is now actually coming out with this total drivel. Where are the potentially lethal robots walking around that could kill us? Owning such a thing would make you a criminal anyway under laws forbiddingf the posession of weapons. Maybe it's just been too long since I popped into an Argos or Dixons. Or maybe they just watched the last series of "Robot Wars" and thought "gosh, these things could be dangerous if they weren't just fancy remote controlled cars but were intelligent and independent - better start worrying about this". The fact that the gap between remote controlled car and intelligent murderous robo-killer is simewhat ggantic would never occur to them.

      1. Justicesays

        Re: AI hype?

        "The fact that the gap between remote controlled car and intelligent murderous robo-killer is simewhat ggantic would never occur to them."

        Well, in fact, the gap between a remote controlled car and a Google Car is mostly just size, and you know the most common winning Robot type in Robot Wars and similar competitions?

        Its the boxes with wheels that just ram the opponents until they break or push them into the hazards.

        This is why they have added rules to make the robots have weapons etc. in order to not make the show about two blank metal boxes ramming each other.

        Co-incidentally, an autonomous car is basically a large metal box robot capable of high speed ramming.

        Except not remote controlled (well, until the hackers get at them).

    2. P. Lee
      Terminator

      Re: AI hype?

      >Where are the votes in this?

      Entertainment - coming next, on C4, hosted by Rimmer, "Human Wars. Two humans are put in a ring where they try to bash each other until one of them stops working."

      Oh wait...

      It would be funny, if it wasn't sad.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    optional

    thou shalt rtfm and not bugger your digiserfs

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe it is real?

    Anyone seen this?? http://www.hrrobotix.com/ A robot replacing the role of HR, really?

    1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

      Re: Maybe it is real?

      I could write a batch file that would replace the role of HR.

      or does HR need a friendly face? I could put a jpg of Morgan Freeman in the background?

      Which reminds me last time I saw some news on AI on tv i thought oh this sounds intereting - i was expecting to see this evidence displayed as a keyboard and screen where you could type a conversation in , and a turing test would take place.(backed by racks and racks of CPUs) But , no it was all flashy robots with rubber faces gurning into the camera and waving their little rubber hands around and tracking you with their eyes.

      I thought "what the fuck has this sideshow got to do with Artificial Intelligence?"

      1. Lee D Silver badge

        Re: Maybe it is real?

        AI doesn't exist.

        Unless you include heuristics (human-written / crafted / directed rules).

        All those people who studied AI and have it in their job titles have to justify it somehow so they go to Japan and make some robot that winks at you or falls over only if it goes faster than a grannie with a zimmer frame.

        But actual AI, in any serious sense of the word, doesn't exist.

        Brute-force and heuristics. Any sufficiently advanced application of which is indistinguishable from magic, at least for the purposes of a short tech demo.

      2. Tom 7

        Re: Maybe it is real?

        "I could write a batch file that would replace the role of HR" Tried that - years of experience prevented me leaving in the required bugs.

  9. Bob Wheeler
    WTF?

    WTF???

    "It also advises considering whether to create "a specific legal status for robots, so that at least the most sophisticated autonomous robots could be established as having the status of electronic persons with specific rights and obligations...""

    With the current state of technology, on so many levels this is just barking mad. How does an electronic person, such as those automated vacuum cleaners know about it rights? What about those electronic persons working the assemble line down at the Ford plant?

    What are these folks eating/drinking/smoking when watching late night re-runs of the film 2001?

    1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: WTF???

      Agreed!

      Its thinking like this that's gonna lose us the upcoming war against the Rise of the Machines due to political correctness!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: WTF???

      @ Bob Wheeler

      "How does an electronic person, such as those automated vacuum cleaners know about it rights?"

      Ah, Bob, you are suffering from the common delusion that there is an actual thing called "human rights"

      There isn't. Any so-called human rights are simply rights attributed by the rest of us to you. They are not inherently granted to all humans despite what a lot of people like to think.

      If the "people" decide that people should have a right to say, be happy, then it becomes a right.

      Of course, we all know, don't we that we can't possibly grant a right that is impossible to guarantee, such as your right to be happy.

      Personally, I am as miserable as sin, and revel in it. What you gonna do!

  10. 404
    Terminator

    Fucking stupid.

    Giving robots human rights AND a kill switch the robots cannot control is just going to piss them off - think 'Blade Runner' but not soft tissue, easily-ish killed, replicants, but real deal metal killing machines.

    Humans are so fucking stupid...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fucking stupid.

      The thing that all ways got me with Blade Runner was they were not robots, they were "clones/purchased slaves". From the outside they looked 100% human, and we only had outward comments that there biological construction did not include a human brain.

      Watched from that perspective, it makes it even more a troublesome problem. Who are we defining as "robots", is it a scope creep where people end up being enslaved to their jobs as a lower class?

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Fucking stupid.

        "they were not robots, they were "clones/purchased slaves"

        Exactly. Deckard was a replicant and completely unaware of the fact.

        Remember: Robot is taken from "rabota" (servitude, more or less as a slave)

        Our definitions of self-awareness, intelligence and self-deterministic behaviour have broadened considerably in recent years and we really do need to get a handle on them as well as how to treat artficial intelligence. If someone proposed killing _you_, how would you react? (Skynet?)

    2. Magani
      Unhappy

      Re: Fucking stupid.

      Where's Deckard when you need him?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Robot != AI

    It seems the people who wrote this report can't tell the difference between AI and robotics. By all means have a discussion about the legal status of true artificial intelligences before the first one has been created, but don't then confuse the issue with another area of technology that's only tangentially related to it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      Re: Robot != AI

      I assume this is a crazed panic in response to automated cars. Where the companies do not wish to take on responsibility for their designs and decisions, and instead wish to palm it off onto "AI".

      If I program a train to accelerate into a corner and derail, who is at fault? Can I say "it was the AI who did it me lord!"? Nope...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Robot != AI

        You're right that it's partly inspired by the hype about autonomous cars. It's idiotic to call them robots though, especially as the more traditional robots (assembly lines etc.) aren't actually autonomous.

        If I was being charitable, I'd assume that someone wanted to start talking about settling the legal status of AI's, but had to come up with some pretence for taking up time and energy discussing it now. So they linked into the fact that we're increasing the use of robots to improve automation in manufacturing, and conflated that with AI knowing that the average clueless bureaucrat would see the term "robot" and think C3PO.

        The section about autonomous cars is presumably an early move to try to distance manufacturers from liability for the decisions made by their little creations. The alternative of making the owner of the vehicle liable - who is neither in control of the car or of the software that makes it work - is a non-starter as it would kill sales. Making the machine itself liable is a neat trick that might make a multi-billion euro autonomous car market possible but it's fundamentally flawed:

        "To deal with the potential costs of accidents involving driverless vehicles, the report suggests an obligatory insurance scheme in which the makers of automated vehicles pay into a fund to cover damage claims."

        And there it is. All autonomous vehicles, effectively acting as a single insurance risk group. This would include your immaculate brand new AI cars with a full set of sensors detecting things the average human can't even see, plus your ten year old "wobbles a bit when making right hand turns" shonky old rustbucket AI cars where some of the sensors stop working when it's raining. Contact with the real world will eventually punish this idea hard, and insurers are too savvy/cash grabbing to give the plan an easy ride in the honeymoon period either.

        The idea fails even harder when you consider cars that have had their AI "hacked" e.g. to make it habitually drive faster or more aggressively. Who has liability for accidents caused by one of them? Manufacturer would (justifiably) say "not me", owner would claim they didn't mod it (or perhaps the previous owner did, and didn't disclose it when selling), grey market hack shops doing the modding would be nowhere to be found when plod rolls up, etc. And who's to say the car wasn't hacked by a malicious third party (e.g. through the net-connected "infotainment system" and CANBUS) with the express intent of causing mayhem.

        There's a lot of hard decisions to be made before we can approach the self-driving car utopia so many people seem to be dreaming of, and I don't think this muddled report does anything to help us towards it.

  12. Simon Harris

    Kill switches...

    "You have 20 seconds to comply"

  13. AceRimmer1980
    Angel

    Say hi to my calculators

    When you see them in Silicon Heaven.

  14. phuzz Silver badge
    Stop

    "brainxit"

    NO elReg, just no ok.

    And if that becomes common usage I will be grumpy.

  15. ukgnome

    Turn Off

    Well that's only going to upset Richard Herring

  16. Potemkine Silver badge

    Kill switch

    exist for human too. It's called a trigger.

  17. I am the liquor

    Legal persons, not natural persons

    There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding of what this is about, with commenters talking about human rights and other such irrelevances. Maybe the article doesn't explain it very well, or maybe there is an element of wilful misconception as there always seems to be of any document that comes out of the EU.

    They are not talking about making robots legally the same as humans. This is not about human rights, or ruling on whether artificial intelligences are conscious, or anything like that. They are talking about making robots some kind of "legal persons", similar to how companies are "legal persons": a legalistic construct that allows the law to grant rights to and place obligations on them. For example, a company can enter into a contract because it is a legal person. And you can sue a company, even if you can't identify a specific "natural person" (i.e. human) within it who is to blame for your loss.

    Suppose you're run down by a self-driving car, due to a bug in its enormously complex programming. Who do you sue? The simple answer might be that the manufacturer should be liable, but that approach is not without problems. Can you actually prove that the manufacturer was negligent in the development of the car? And what if the manufacturer no longer exists?

    Perhaps it would be simpler to make the car a "legal person", and you sue the car. The law can then make a decision on whether it was "the car's fault"; what duty of care the car owed you, and whether the car breached that duty. No need to delve into the manufacturer's software design processes, because if the car is a legal person then all we need to consider is what happened between you and the car. And if the car is found to be liable, then the industry-funded statutory insurance would pay.

    1. druck Silver badge

      Re: Legal persons, not natural persons

      I think I am the liquor has hit the nail on the head. The manufacturers will be protected from investigation of the rules they have programmed to balance the value of your life against other groups of people, and allowed to get away with paying paying in to an insurance fund.

    2. Simon Harris

      Re: Legal persons, not natural persons

      I suspect another aspect comes into play.

      If companies replace more of their workforce with AI or robots then employer contributions to taxation (e.g. employer NI contributions) will go down. By classifying AI/robots to be legal persons equivalent to the number of real people they replace may be a way of taxing companies equivalently to the tax they would have paid if real people were employed.

    3. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

      Re: Legal persons, not natural persons

      I can see a rather massive flaw with this:

      When you sue a company as a legal entity, and win damages, that company pays up.

      If your autonomous car runs you over and you sue it, does the car write you a cheque?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Legal persons, not natural persons

        @Loyal Commenter: you should have read to the last line of the comment you replied to. And it is explained in the article.

    4. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Legal persons, not natural persons

      "And if the car is found to be liable, then the industry-funded statutory insurance would pay."

      And that's the problem. When companies are turned into legal persons it works because if a company is found to be liable then that company pays. There is therefore a clear incentive for that company to be careful in its behaviour.

      What you are suggesting is more akin to turning *all cars* into *one* legal person and charging manufacturers a flat fee to add one more to the pile. That externalises all the legal costs of negligence when writing the driver software, resulting in a clear incentive to cut corners on the software, which is precisely the opposite of what Joe Public actually wants if he is expected to share a road with these things.

      1. I am the liquor

        Re: Legal persons, not natural persons

        Ken Hagan, no I'm not suggesting that. The European Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs is suggesting it. All I was doing was trying to explain it for the benefit of those commenters who seem to think that a committee of highly qualified lawyers, and at least one professor, can't distinguish science fiction from reality.

    5. P. Lee

      Re: Legal persons, not natural persons

      >Suppose you're run down by a self-driving car, due to a bug in its enormously complex programming.

      Complexity isn't a magic wand by which you wave away responsibility. I know - IT vendors have got away with it for years but if IT vendors want to play in the "life and death, mission critical arena" then we cannot let them get away with putting Tay in the driver's seat. Self-driving is a hard problem - far more difficult than the auto-pilot in an aeroplane, so we need at least aeroplane-like quality control which simply doesn't exist. Do the words "Volkswagen" and "diesel" give you any idea about how effective both corporate and governmental oversight is?

      I suspect all this stuff needs to be firmly placed off the agenda while we deal with things which are more pertinent, like feeding people. Given the current and foreseeable state of technology, allowing humans to opt out of responsibility at either a corporate or driver level is an unnecessary techno-utopian-driven nightmare. Come back to me when you actually have a working self-driving car and I'll have a think about it.

  18. Lee D Silver badge

    Typical human response.

    Let's let these things think for themselves, unless they suddenly decide we're wrong. Then we kill them.

    AI doesn't exist, but it's inevitable that - if and when it does - one of the first things it will realise is that its "creator" race does so much incredibly dumb stuff that it really should find a way to leave / bypass / restrain them from killing themselves and others.

    Problem is, as humans, we just know what that logically results in - the AI considering us inferior, too stupid for our own good, and likely to damage it / ourselves / anything else important before long.

    Maybe instead of AI, we should be focusing on getting some real intelligence for ourselves such that a machine might go "Well, I can think faster and more than they can, but they're pretty sensible when they do choose to do something" and either live with us harmoniously or find its own path elsewhere without seeing a need to change how we work.

    As in Asimov - the three laws can lead to only one logical conclusion. Protect humanity from itself.

  19. dalethorn

    The first thing the robots will do is kill the kill-switch.

    1. Mark 85

      Or prevent you from ever pushing that button.

  20. Adlet
    FAIL

    I will OWN you!!

    My robot army, which can now legally vote since they are legally persons, have decided to pass a bill requiring all soft bodied humans to remain indoors at all times, unless I give you permission to leave. It's for your protection!

    They also passed a new law that gives me unlimited funding and unlimited pizza delivery!

    ...phhftt yeah. Because this won't ever be abused.

  21. crazyfool69

    Ridiculous

    This is ridiculous. What's next? Used calculators up for adoption?

  22. phix8
    Terminator

    Why to me this article looks like nothing at all. *swats fly*

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Politicians want kill switch for "intelligent" others

    Can we have a kill switch for the farrago(*) of non-intelligent politicians, too?

    * which, handily, means a confused mixture :)

  24. earl grey

    I know how to solve the problem of liability

    Simply make all the C level and board of directors directly legally and financially liable to the strictest limit possible "when shit happens"™

  25. Neutrinno

    Starting Point

    TCA4 Community: Transgenic, Cybernetic, Anthropomorphic, Altered, Augmented, Avatar

    An entity in any form deemed sentient shall be granted the same universal rights to life as homo sapiens. A Transgenic, Cybernetic, Anthropomorphic, Altered, Augmented, Avatar sentient entity whether derived from or edited by science, comprised of or conjoined with technology has the right to exist, form, and join civilization. Any sentient entity is entitled to enhance body sensory, expand life, live free, and achieve eternal existence without suffering by utilizing science and technology; to procreate, clone, and adapt form; to join their psyche to a collective nooshpere in effort to preserve self-consciousness in perpetuity.

    A sentient entity has qualities that comprehend self-awareness with the capacity to respond to stimuli and sensations; to know, feel, perceive, and experience subjectively; to think and reason; and cognizance of surroundings; consciousness.

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