You can’t really punish robots…
They don’t feel pain. They don’t have regrets.
A robot can’t realign its blighted moral compass. It can’t find Jesus.
So who is ultimately responsible when a robot damages human life? Who exactly is subject to punishment?
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This week a Swedish company settled with an industrial worker who was injured by a robot after it “forcibly grabbed the man’s head” and broke four of his ribs.
In this case the company had to pay up.
But sorting out issues of accountability among robot actors and their ‘creators’ gets amorphous.
New Scientist has a good piece on the inevitable need to regulate increasingly autonomous robotic systems:
In the next decades, completely autonomous robots might be involved in many military, policing, transport and even caring roles. What if they malfunction? What if a programming glitch makes them kill, electrocute, demolish, drown and explode, or fail at the crucial moment? Whose insurance will pay for damage to furniture, other traffic or the baby, when things go wrong? The software company, the manufacturer, the owner?
I’m wondering if a legal philosophy of autonomous robot will eventually be taught under the rubric of the legal system…
As these robotic systems become more powerful and dangerous, some kind of ethical and legal framework will be necessary to deal with their de facto dislocation of human accountability.
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