Three Laws

Osborne on Personhood for Synthetic Beings: Legal Parameters and Consequences of the Dawn of Humanlike AI @SCHTLJ

Daniel Osborne has published Personhood for Synthetic Beings: Legal Parameters and Consequences of the Dawn of Humanlike Artificial Intelligence at 37 Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal 257 (2021). Here is the abstract.

There is a growing interest in Artificial Intelligence in tech hubs like Silicon Valley and in the world at large that is finally matching the ambition and creativity that movies and media have been producing for a very long time. This paper takes that cultural interest and economic investment to its logical conclusion and assumes that a humanlike Artificial Intelligence, or synthetic person, can and will be created in the near future. Then it considers what the law should do about that creation. Specifically, this paper argues that a test should be developed for whether a synthetic person can be granted personhood under the law before such test is needed. The tenets, if not the specifics, of such a test are outlined here that provide for a synthetic person that is intelligent, social, self-conscious, and individualized. But that is only half the problem. If a synthetic person can be created, one that passes a pre-determined test that allows it to access legal standing, to what sorts of rights and responsibilities does it have access? In light of the kind of synthetic person that could pass the test, four potential outcomes for rights for a synthetic person are addressed ranging from none to a full suite of human civil rights.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Schroeder on Robots and Rights: Reviewing Recent Positions in Legal Philosophy and Ethics @Faust_III

Wolfgang M. Schroeder, University of Wuerzberg, has published Robots and Rights: Reviewing Recent Positions.  Here is the abstract.

Controversies about the moral and legal status of robots and of humanoid robots in particular are among the top debates in recent practical philosophy and legal theory. As robots become increasingly sophisticated, and engineers make them combine properties of tools with seemingly psychological capacities that were thought to be reserved for humans, such considerations become pressing. While some are inclined to view humanoid robots as more than just tools, discussions are dominated by a clear divide: What some find appealing, others deem appalling, i.e. “robot rights” and “legal personhood” for AI systems. Obviously, we need to organize human–robot interactions according to ethical and juridical principles that optimize benefit and minimize mutual harm. Avoiding disrespectful treatment of robots can help to preserve a normative basic ethical continuum in the behaviour of humans. This insight can contribute to inspire an “overlapping consensus” as conceptualized by John Rawls in further discussions on responsibly coordinating human/robot interactions.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Loza de Siles on AI, on the Law of Being

Emile Loza de Siles, Duquesne University Schools of Law; Technology & Cybersecurity Law Group; University of Maryland Global Campus; has published AI, on the Law of Being: “Feminine” Imagery in Humanoid Robots, Evolving Law as to What Constitutes a Person [Abstract] as Duquesne University School of Law Research Paper No. 2020-12. Here is the abstract.

Mechanized embodiments of artificial intelligence (“AI”) in robots may take humanoid form. Images of agile, tall, and broad-shouldered robots bring to mind untold ranks of lethal autonomous soldiers.” Robots in forms slope-haunched, big-chested, and stalk-gaited call forward images of ferocious dogs used to track and attack troops in World War II or, seen in television broadcasts, of protestors during the Vietnam War or the Civil Rights movement. Perhaps the world’s most famous humanoid robot is “Sophia.” A remarkable machine learning, voice-synthesizing robot, Sophia’s humanoid form uses feminine and pseudonormative imagery: “Caucasian” pale “skin,” blue “eyes” below arched eyebrows, and a notable “breast line” atop a slim-hipped feminine-appearing body. Impeccably styled in designer clothing, the robot has graced the covers of ELLE, COSMOPOLITAN, and other magazines. The robot has operated before the United Nations and so impressed the Saudi Arabian government that it granted this “feminine” robot a first-in-world national citizenship, an unimaginable irony where liberties are sharply curtailed for women, who are often legally no more than chattel. Sophia makers now have built a prepubescently femininely-imaged and evocative “Little Sophia” robot. In promotional media, a girl child features prominently in interactions with the Little Sophia robot, which, among others, incorporates image capture and facial recognition capabilities behind its piquantly lashed, exaggeratedly large doe eyes. What does such “feminine” imagery for these robots connote? What role does it play? What is its calculated purpose? Is it meant to evoke stereotypes of feminine subservience? Does the “feminine” imagery of the Sophia and Little Sophia allow humans will feel less threatened by robots and to anthropomorphize them more easily? Does this, in turn, aim to accelerate the social acceptance of robots as part of daily life and, again calling on feminine stereotypes, trust them more readily? Research and anecdote suggest this is so. As with feminine-appearing sex dolls and robots in Japan and elsewhere, does this imagery lead some men to embrace mechanosexuality and to prefer humanoid “females” over women? Reports from Japan suggest this is also so, as do $10,000 bids from men to have sex with a “virgin” robot. What are the legal evolutionary impacts of the use of feminine imagery for robots and the triggering by that imagery of female stereotypes? Does it portend a denigration of what it means to be a person under the law? Specifically, does it degrade how the law views and treats a female human person? If, for example, rape of a robot person is a legal impossibility, what devolution of law may that threaten for a woman, a girl? Saudi citizenship for the Sophia robot and European legal developments toward robot citizenship foretell that the realm of legal personhood is expanding to include inanimate, but mechanically embodied, intelligence-mimicking things. What does this portend for humans? The attachment of legal personhood to corporations, for example, has been a workable, if not always just, legal fiction. Citizen United, however, shows what democracy-devastating consequences of that fiction. What greater harm could result from including robots and other AI systems within the legal scope of “person”? If a robot is a person, would the infamy of Dred Scott drive courts to conclude that a robot is likewise a citizen? If a robot is a person, what about Her? Are there countervailing benefits to attaching personhood and citizenship to robots or other AI instantiations? What about permitting the use of evocative imagery for robots, such as for in-home robots that function as medication reminder and tracking systems, and de facto companions, to seniors living alone? What about robots that help children with autism spectrum conditions learn to become more socially skilled? This work explores these pressing questions and creates opportunity to formulate others.

Mik on AI as a Legal Person?

Eliza Mik Melbourne Law School; Singapore Management University; TILT; is publishing AI as a Legal Person? in Artificial Intelligence & Intellectual Property (Reto Hilty & Kung-Chung Li, eds., OUP, 2020) (Forthcoming).

Cyclical advancements in artificial intelligence (“AI”) are usually accompanied by theories advocating the granting of legal personhood to sophisticated, autonomous computers. The paper criticizes such theories as incorrect — a possible result of legal scholars being seduced by incomprehensible technical terminology, sensationalistic stories in the popular press and “creative” photo filters that transform our faces into animals. Discussions as to when computers should be recognized as persons are, logically, outside of the scope of intellectual property law. The granting of legal personhood is not premised on the existence of consciousness, intelligence or creativity. Recognizing an entity as a legal person is a normative choice dictated by commercial expediency, not the result of fulfilling any technical criteria. While it is necessary to acknowledge the blurring of borders between art and (computer) science as well as the increase in the technological sophistication of the tools used by authors and inventors, it is also necessary to state that even an exponential increase in “computer creativity” will not sever the link between the computer and its user. Before discarding the idea of legal personhood for “creative algorithms” once and for all, the paper explores the relationships between autonomy and creativity. In particular, it places technical terms such as “AI” and “autonomy” in their original context and criticizes uninformed attempts to imbue them with normative connotations.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Banteka on Artificially Intelligent Persons @nbanteka

Nadia Banteka, Villanova University School of Law, is publishing Artificially Intelligent Persons in the Houston Law Review (volume 58) (2020). Here is the abstract.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) entities seriously challenge traditional legal frameworks for attribution and liability because they operate at an increasing distance from their developers and owners, resulting in accountability gaps. Consider a scenario in which a self-driving car causes injury or even death to a human. Who do we hold accountable? We have no clear answer as to who can be sued or prosecuted because we lack a comprehensive legal understanding of AI entities. Many scholars propose as a solution to the accountability problem attaching liability to the direct source of the harm, the AI entity itself, by first granting it legal personhood. But the law has yet to answer the question of whether AI entities qualify for legal personhood and, if so, on what legal basis. This article is the first to empirically assess the scope of legal personhood as it relates to AI entities, and to answer this question. I make two claims about the problem of legal personhood for AI. First, I argue that the courts’ overall approach to legal personhood has been more disparate than many have assumed, and it does not support legal personhood for AI entities. To substantiate this position, I analyze the legal basis for judicial decisions conferr ing legal personhood on artificial entities across U.S. courts from 1809 to the present, and I offer a statistical analysis of the frequency with which different conditions for legal personhood appear in these decisions. I find a clear dissonance between legal doctrine and existing theory on legal personhood for AI entities. Second, I argue that empirically understanding the legal landscape for legal personhood prevents courts from conferring legal personhood on AI entities, and should give legislators pause before doing so. If courts and legislators consider the conditions for legal personhood that this article identifies in answering questions of liability for AI entities, they will discover the incompatibility between legal personhood and these entities. Without recognition of this incompatibility, theory, policy, and litigation surrounding AI entities could move in a direction that undermines legal certainty and upsets legal expectation.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.B

Lior on AI Entities as AI Agents @AnatLior @yaleisp

Anat Lior, Yale University Law School; Yale Information Society Project, is publishing AI Entities as AI Agents: Artificial Intelligence Liability and the AI Respondeat Superior Analogy in volume 46 of the Mitchell Hamline Law Review (2020). Here is the abstract.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) based entities are already causing damages and fatalities in today's commercial world. As a result, the dispute about tort liability of AI-based machines, algorithms, agents and robots is exponentially advancing in the scholarly world and outside of it. When it comes to AI accidents, different scholars and key figures in the AI industry advocate for different liability regimes. This ever-growing disagreement is condemning this new emergent technology, soon to be found in almost every home and street in the US and around the world, into a realm of regulatory uncertainty. This obstructs our ability to fully enjoy the many benefits AI has to offer us as consumers and as a society. This Article advocates for the adoption and application of a strict liability regime on current and future AI accidents. It does so by delving into and exploring the realm of legal analogies in the AI context and promoting the agency analogy, and subsequently, the respondeat superior doctrine. This Article explains and justifies why the agency analogy is the best-suited one in contrast to other analogies which have been suggested in the context of AI liability (e.g., products, animals, electronic persons and even slaves). As a result, the intuitive application of the respondeat superior doctrine provides the AI industry with a much-needed underlying liability regime which will enable it to continue to evolve in the years to come, and its victim to receive remedy once accidents occur.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Chesterman on We, the Robots @ProfChesterman

Simon Chesterman, National University of Singapore, has published We, the Robots?. Here is the abstract.

As computers surpass human intelligence and take on greater responsibilities, should they be given rights also? This essay considers the evolution of the Turing Test for machine intelligence and its relationship to ongoing debates about legal personality and artificial intelligence.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Jaynes on Legal Personhood for AI

Tyler L. Jaynes, Utah Valley University, has published Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligence: Citizenship as the Exception to the Rule, at 34 AI & Society 1 (2019). Here is the abstract.

The concept of artificial intelligence is not new nor is the notion that it should be granted legal protections given its influence on human activity. What is new, on a relative scale, is the notion that artificial intelligence can possess citizenship—a concept reserved only for humans, as it presupposes the idea of possessing civil duties and protections. Where there are several decades’ worth of writing on the concept of the legal status of computational artificial artefacts in the USA and elsewhere, it is surprising that law makers internationally have come to a standstill to protect our silicon brainchildren. In this essay, it will be assumed that future artificial entities, such as Sophia the Robot, will be granted citizenship on an international scale. With this assumption, an analysis of rights will be made with respect to the needs of a non-biological intelligence possessing legal and civic duties akin to those possessed by humanity today. This essay does not present a full set of rights for artificial intelligence—instead, it aims to provide international jurisprudence evidence aliunde ab extra de lege lata for any future measures made to protect non-biological intelligence.

Download the article from the website here.

Craig and Kerr on the Death of the AI Author @CraigCarys @ianrkerr

Carys J. Craig, Osgoode Hall Law School, and Ian R. Kerr, University of Ottawa, Common Law Section, have published The Death of the AI Author. Here is the abstract.

Much of the second-generation literature on AI and authorship asks whether an increasing sophistication and independence of generative code should cause us to rethink embedded assumptions about the meaning of authorship, arguing that recognizing the authored nature of AI-generated works may require a less profound doctrinal leap than has historically been suggested. In this essay, we argue that the threshold for authorship does not depend on the evolution or state of the art in AI or robotics. Instead, we contend that the very notion of AI-authorship rests on a category mistake: it is not an error about the current or potential capacities, capabilities, intelligence or sophistication of machines; rather it is an error about the ontology of authorship. Building on the established critique of the romantic author figure, we argue that the death of the romantic author also and equally entails the death of the AI author. We provide a theoretical account of authorship that demonstrates why claims of AI authorship do not make sense in terms of 'the realities of the world in which the problem exists.' (Samuelson, 1985) Those realities, we argue, must push us past bare doctrinal or utilitarian considerations of originality, assessed in terms of what an author must do. Instead, what they demand is an ontological consideration of what an author must be. The ontological question, we suggest, requires an account of authorship that is relational; it necessitates a vision of authorship as a dialogic and communicative act that is inherently social, with the cultivation of selfhood and social relations as the entire point of the practice. Of course, this ontological inquiry into the plausibility of AI-authorship transcends copyright law and its particular doctrinal conundrums, going to the normative core of how law should — and should not — think about robots and AI, and their role in human relations.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Linarelli on Advanced Artificial Intelligence and Contract @JohnLinarelli

John Linarelli, Durham University, is publishing Advanced Artificial Intelligence and Contract in the Uniform Law Review. Here is the abstract.

The aim of this article is to inquire whether contract law can operate in a state of affairs in which artificial general intelligence (AGI) exists and has the cognitive abilities to interact with humans to exchange promises or otherwise engage in the sorts of exchanges typically governed by contract law. AGI is a long way off but its emergence may be sudden and come in the lifetimes of some people alive today. How might contract law adapt to a situation in which at least one of the contract parties could, from the standpoint of capacity to engage in promising and exchange, be an AGI? This is not a situation in which AI operates as an agent of a human or a firm, a frequent occurrence right now. Rather, the question is whether an AGI could constitute a principal – a contract party on its own. Contract law is a good place to start a discussion about adapting the law for an AGI future because it already incorporates a version of what is known as weak AI in its objective standard for contract formation and interpretation. Contract law in some limited sense takes on issues of relevance from philosophy of mind. AGI holds the potential to transform a solution to an epistemological problem of how to prove a contract exists into solution to an ontological problem about the capacity to contract. An objection might be that contract law presupposes the existence of a person the law recognizes as possessing the capacity to contract. Contract law itself may not be able to answer the prior question of legally recognized personhood. The answer will be to focus on how AGI cognitive architecture could be designed for compatibility for human interaction. This article focuses on that question as well.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.