Yueh-Hsuan Weng – Robohub

Quest for Roboethics: An interview with Prof. Rafael Capurro

Yueh-Hsuan Weng — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 13:46:24 +0000

In this interview, we invited Prof. Rafael Capurro to share his insights on past, current, and future trends in robot ethics.

Interviewee: Prof. Rafael Capurro, Founder, International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE) and Member of IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems

Interviewer: Dr. Yueh-Hsuan Weng, Co-founder of ROBOLAW.ASIA and Assistant Professor at Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, Tohoku University (from March 2017)

As a pioneer of Information Ethics, Prof. Capurro created “The Quest for Roboethics: A Survey” and since 2010 continues to update relevant information about ethical issues in robotics. He’s participated in key European projects, such as ETHICBOTS (2005-2008), ETICA (2009-2012), and CA-RoboCom, which was a candidate project of EU FET Flagship initiatives. He has also collaborated with Asian researchers from Remin University of China and University of Tsukuba, so he possesses a unique point of view about robot ethics from Eastern traditions.

WENG: Maybe we can start with your academic background. Could you please give a brief introduce of yourself and the International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE) to our readers?

CAPURRO: I have a Licentiate (University of El Salvador, Argentina, 1971) and a PhD (Düsseldorf University, Germany, 1978) in Philosophy as well as a post-doctoral degree in Ethics (Stuttgart University, Germany, 1989). I have been working in the field of Documentation/Information Science since the early seventies in Germany. I was a Professor of Information Management and Information Ethics at Stuttgart Media University from 1986 until 2009 when I retired. I was Lecturer in Philosophy/Ethics at Stuttgart University between 1989 until 2004.

In 1999 I founded the International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE). ICIE soon became a community of some 300 colleagues from different countries and fields interested in the ethical issues associated with new technologies. Jared Bielby (Canada) is ICIE Co-Chair. The ICIE (co-)organizes international meetings and has, since 2004, published an open access online journal, the International Review of Information Ethics (IRIE) of which I am the Editor-in-Chief. There is an ICIE book series published by Fink (Munich) which currently has published five volumes (including contributions in German and English). ICIE membership is free of charge. The contact with the members is through a mailing list. We inform our members about meetings and publications that are added to the website.

WENG: In 2010 you created “The Quest for Roboethics: A Survey” and keep updating relevant information in regards to Robot Ethics. As a pioneer of Information Ethics, what made you focus on this emerging subject in techno-ethics?

CAPURRO: This survey was originally a contribution to a workshop held on September 30, 2009 and organized by Cybernics, University of Tsukuba (Japan). It was published in Cybernics Technical Reports: Special Issue on Roboethics (University of Tsukuba 2011, pp. 39-59). At that time, issues dealing with ethics and robotics were relatively new but the field expanded quickly— so much so I decided to update this survey regularly—albeit without seeing it as needing to be an exhaustive overview of the field. It is just a means, for myself and maybe for others, to help to keep pace with a range of ongoing robot ethics discussions.

My interest in robotics and AI goes back to the mid-80s: I participated in a group in charge of developing a Code of Ethics for the German Society for Informatics. I read Joseph Weizenbaum‘s Computer Power and Human Reason (1977), Pamela McCorduck‘s Machines Who Think (1979), David W. Johnson and J.W. Snapper (eds.) Ethical Issues and the Use of Computers (1985), Deborah Johnson’s Computer Ethics (1985), Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores’s Understanding Computers and Cognition (1986), Hans Moravec’s Mind Children (1988), to mention just a few. My first book publication dealing
with these issues was a collection of papers with the title Living in the Information Age (1995).

WENG: In your previous presentation at University of Tsukuba you mentioned that an Eastern tradition of Buddhism to robot ethics is that “robots as one more partner in the global interaction of things”. Could you please explain this?

CAPURRO: I visited Japan for the first time while on sabbatical in 1998 as a guest of the University of Library and Information Science (ULIS), which was integrated later on into the University of Tsukuba. I had conversations on ethical issues associated with the information society with ULIS staff and students as well as on philosophy with Prof. Riuji Endo. I also met Prof. Koichiro Matsuno (Nagaoka University of Technology) with whom I exchanged views on the concept of information. Since then, I have been invited to Japan several times by Prof. Makoto Nakada (Univ. of Tsukuba) with whom I have had the honor, and the pleasure, to learn about robot ethics as they are viewed from within Eastern traditions.

Prof. Nakada and I discussed issues of privacy from an intercultural perspective. The difference associated with how robots are understood in the “Far East” and the “Far West,” to use the terms coined by French sinologist François Jullien, can be traced back to the Cartesian split which conceives the human psyche as separated from the so-called “outside world.” Buddhism and Taoism open different paths of thought, particularly with regard to the Japanese concept of Ba (situation). This dialogue on intercultural robot ethics between Prof. Nakada and myself can be found here.

I would also like to mention two other events that deal with these issues. The first is the international symposium organized by The Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education and The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (held in December 2010 in Oxford). More details on this can be found in my paper “Beyond Humanisms”. The other event was the International Conference on China’s Information Ethics (organized by Renmin University of China, School of Philosophy (Prof. LI Maosen), and the International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE) held at Renmin University, Beijing, P.R. China, October 28-29, 2010). I presented a paper at the conference entitled: The Dao of the Information Society in China and the Task of Intercultural Information Ethics. The paper was translated into Chinese by Junlan Liang (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) and published in the journal Social Sciences Abroad ( 2011, Vol. 5, pp. 83-88).

In December 2009, I was invited to participate at the Global Forum on Civilization and Peace organized by The Academy of Korean Studies in Seoul where I was asked to speak about “Digital Ethics.” It was the first time I used this terminology rather than the usual one, namely, Information Ethics. The proceedings were published by The Academy of Korean Studies (ed.): 2009 Civilization and Peace, Korea: The Academy of Korean Studies 2010.

WENG: You and Prof. Nagenborg have pointed out that “Robots are and will remain in the foreseeable future dependent on human ethical scrutiny as well as on the moral and legal responsibility of humans”. In this case, how can we regulate Robo-morality?

CAPURRO: This statement is based on our research within two European projects, namely
– ETHICBOTS (2005-2008), as well as the book edited by me and Michael Nagenborg Ethics and Robotics (Heidelberg, 2009) and ETICA (2009-2012).

To “regulate Robot-morality” means to develop different kinds of standards for robot behavior in different contexts and cultures which is not the same as a sustainable ethical scrutiny on the development and use of robots in society, which is a larger research issue. The idea that robots would some day become philosophers or ethicists — being able to critically reflect on who they are — belongs to the field of science fiction.

WENG: What is your comment to “Ethical Robots”? Do you believe that Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics will be feasible principles to ensure the safety of physical human-robot interactions?

CAPURRO: As you know, Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) was a science-fiction author. The “laws” were published for the first time in the volume I, Robot (1950). If we look for a legal framework to ensure the safety of humans in human-robot interactions we should pay attention to the issue that humans, as well as other living beings, deserve legal protection in order to ensure their safety. It makes no sense to legally protect robots beyond seeing them as just another device that is the property of some other person or corporation. It makes also no sense to speak about “the safety of physical human-washing machine interactions” aiming for ensuring the safety of washing machines (as if they were a kind of person who deserves protection). This is in line with what Asimov imagined in the title of his book I, Robot. Essentially, we need a broad legal and ethical discussion on the uses and misuses of robots in society.

WENG: Could you please tell us more about the state of arts in Machine Ethics? Are there any progress in terms of programming machines to act with human beings in an ethical way?

CAPURRO: “Machine Ethics” means the ethical reflection on machines done by humans, not machines engaging in such reflection on themselves (and on us). Ethics is done by members of human society reflecting critically on the customs (Greek: ethos, Latin: mores) underlying their being-together. “Machine Ethics” is, from this perspective, i.e., as a critical reflection done by machines, an oxymoron. If we want machines to act “in an ethical way” then we have to provide them with some kind of moral (and legal) rules of behavior. We are responsible for their formulation, fixation and interpretation. It makes no sense to make machines “morally responsible” for their actions.

WENG: “BS 8611: Ethics design and application robots” is a standard highlighting the ethical hazards of robots. Do you think that Ethics by Design might be a crucial factor to future safety standards for service robots?

CAPURRO: Once again, when we talk about the “ethical hazards of robots” the meaning of the “of” is of the kind already explained, i.e. it is genitivus obiectivus. The “Ethics by Design” concerns moral (and legal) rules, not the ethical reflection on such rules nor their interpretation and application. Who is to blame should an accident occur? Machines are per se a-moral which does not mean that they are neutral. Nothing we invent is neutral in the sense that it is already part of human life and it changes, for better or worse, our lives. The idea that machines are neutral because we can use them for different purposes disregards this basic issue. Machines do not behave at all in the way humans deal with each other (with possibilities of respect or disrespect concerning who we are). It is up to us to reflect on the risks we want to take for ourselves and for others when we program a machine to behave in this or that way in a given situation. As it is impossible to foresee all possible situations, every fixation of rules means making a selection of situations. Dilemmas arise when fixed rules do not match unforeseeable situations. Humans can be creative in such cases as they are not bound to fixed rules. This does not mean, of course, that a human decision can end less tragically than a “decision” made by a machine. In sum, we should let robots act in situations in which we can exclude the unforeseeable as far as possible. Beyond that we should take responsibility for the solution of the dilemma the machine is facing; it is our dilemma from the very moment we fix their rules of behavior.

WENG: In your opinion what is the major challenge to develop robot ethics for the following decade?

CAPURRO: This is an international and intercultural challenge since it deals with a critical reflection on societal customs, or mores, and the different kinds of moral and legal rules that will be developed for robots. There might be some global standards of such rules, but if robots are used in specific situations then the social expectations might differ and a translation process is necessary. This can be a very practical process but if we want to question why people expect this or that, in this or that context in different societies, then we have to go deep into underlying moral and ethical traditions that were built over centuries. Moral and legal rules are a kind of “symbolic immune system” for societies according to the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. Symbolic immune systems, no less than biological ones, can themselves become a danger if they are not flexible enough to change according to new situations. Robot ethics is similar to immunology in the sense that it deals with monitoring the efficiency and effectiveness of symbolic immune systems when we inoculate moral (and legal) rules into robots.

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Technical challenges in machine ethics

Yueh-Hsuan Weng — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 14:00:00 +0000

An Air Force airman at the control module of an MQ-9 Reaper. Credit: John Bainter/USAF

Machine ethics offers an alternative solution for artificial intelligence (AI) safety governance. In order to mitigate risks in human-robot interactions, robots will have to comply with humanity’s ethical and legal norms, once they’ve merged into our daily life with highly autonomous capability. In terms of technical challenges, there are still many open questions in machine ethics. For example, what is deontic logic and how can it be used for improving AI safety? How do we fashion the knowledge representation for ethical robots? What about the adaptiveness of the ethical governance? These are all significant questions for us to investigate.

In this interview, we invite Prof. Ronald C. Arkin to share his insights on robot ethics, with a focus on its technical aspects.

Date: February 1st 2017

Interviewee: Prof. Ronald C. Arkin, Regents’ Professor and Associate Dean in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Executive Committee Member of IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems

Interviewer: Dr. Yueh-Hsuan Weng, Co-founder of ROBOLAW.ASIA and Fellow at CLAST AI & Law Research Committee (Beijing) and Tech and Law Center (Milan).

Ron Arkin

Q1 WENG: Thank you for agreeing to an interview with us. Can you tell us a little about your background?

ARKIN: I have been a roboticist for 35 years, so it’s hard to tell [only] a little, but I will do my best. Currently I am a Regents’ Professor and Associate Dean in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. I got my Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts in 1987, and have been working on robotics since that time. I actually have degrees in chemistry as well—a bachelor’s and a master’s in organic chemistry. So, I have a rather diverse background and followed a non-traditional path compared to most computer scientists.

Q2 WENG: What is your definition of “Ethical Robots”?

ARKIN: That’s an interesting question! I have been asked that one before. I would say an ethical robot is a robotic system that is able to comply with the ethical and social norms of human beings—in some cases in accordance with international law, in other cases in accordance with national or local law. In addition, also being able to comport with humans in a natural manner, obey, and adhere to the same principles as an ethical person.

Q3 WENG: Could you please tell us why you are particularly interested in “Embedded Ethics”? Why is this concept so important?

ARKIN: That’s why you need to read the preface of my book [Governing Lethal Behaviour in Autonomous Robots]. It’s a rather long story. But let me try to give you a short version. Again, it dates back to a meeting—the first international symposium in Roboethics in 2004—where I was exposed to international conventions, e.g., the Geneva convention. It also led me to understand the Vatican’s position on how they viewed appropriate ethical interactions. Perhaps even more important than that one experience was the fact that we roboticists that have been in the field for some time finally started to have success, and we were seeing our technology move out of the laboratory community and into the real world. As such, it wasn’t hard to see how this could go in a variety of different directions.

Some robotics technology could benefit humanity, some not so much. At that point, one has to ask, “who is responsible for this?” So I assumed that, in part, it was myself. I believe that I have to take the responsibility for the technology that I helped to create. The issue is that we, as roboticists, had actually succeeded in many ways in terms of creating technology that we only envisioned when we first started that is going to have potentially profound impact on our society and the world as a whole. As such, we should be proactive in the ways in which we move forward [in order] to get a better understanding of the consequences of the work, and the social implications of the technology we are designing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOJwkvihYtc

Q4 WENG: The IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems has published their report “Ethically Aligned Design” in December 2016. As a member of the IEEE Global Initiative, could you please tell us about your role?

ARKIN: I serve a variety of roles. First, I am on the executive committee of that particular initiative, so I work at a high-level with about 30 other people or so. We have committees that large. I also co-chair the committee in Affective Computing. Joanna Bryson is my co-chair on that.

Affective Computing is concerned with the issues surrounding the illusion of emotions we can potentially create in these artifacts, and the ways human beings can bond to them. We are exploring a variety of different things, including robot intimacy, or the notion of applying robotic nudges and moving people in certain directions subtly, and in so doing to change the way people act and behave using these technologies, while trying to understand what may or may not be appropriate guidelines based on ethical considerations.

It’s about 15-20 people in that committee. We are one of the newer committees and we only have a couple of pages in the initial design report. But actually, in the June meeting in Austin, for the next release of the document 2.0, we will have as much as the other committees do. Finally, I am also a member of the humanitarian committee. I think it is called economic and humanitarian. I don’t know the exact title, but I am interested in the humanitarian side, and potential uses of robotics for humanitarian applications.

Q5 WENG: What is “Deontic Logic”? Why does it matter to machine ethics?

ARKIN: It may or may not matter. It’s just one approach to a particular problem. Deontic logic is a logic of prohibitions, obligations and permissions. It is one type of framework that is more transparent in order to get a better understanding of the way in which systems operate in the real world. Then it explains its reasoning to a human being, as compared to say deep learning or other forms of neural networks which may indeed provide good results but provide no explanatory capability to humans after the decision has been made.

The notion of prohibitions basically tells the robot some things it cannot do. The notion of permissions describe the things it is potentially allowed to do. And the notion of obligations says things that the robot must do under specific circumstances. It provides a nice framework of being able to explore morality. Others have already explored this, like Bringsjord at RPI who has applied deontic logic in this framework. We are certainly not the first in that particular space. Much of the work we have done has dealt with first-order predicate logic as a basis. It doesn’t have to be deep because it is so explicit in many cases.

Q6 WENG: Your hybrid embedded ethics framework aims for governing lethal behavior of military robots. Can we apply the same technical framework to service robots? For example, personal care robots might have some non-lethal, but still risky autonomous behaviors that need to be regulated by machine ethics.

ARKIN: I believe so. Indeed the whole point of the architecture is trying to design the systems to make them generalizable and not ad hoc for particular sets of circumstances. We have yet to look at service robotics in a traditional sense, but we have already developed something we refer to as the intervening Ethical Governor, which we are using for health care applications—particularly for assisting the management of two human beings in a particular relationship, like a patient and their care giver.

A robot hands a medication bottle to a person. Photo credit: Keith Bujak. Source: Georgia Tech News Center

We are doing work for the National Science Foundation, joint with Tufts University, looking at how in early stage Parkinson’s there is a condition called the facial masking. The loss of muscle movements in the face of the patient can produce stigmatization, and the patient-care giver relationship deteriorates due to the loss of non-verbal communication. We just had a paper accepted at ICRA describing the architecture that we have and how it has been modified from the military version. We generalized it from the military constraint-based version to a rule-based version.

But also, instead of using the international humanitarian law, we are using occupational therapy guides as a basis for generating the responses when two human beings in the relationship step outside of acceptable bounds. So the acceptable bounds now are not defined by international humanitarian law, but they are defined by occupational therapy—such as when a patient or a care giver start to yell at each other, or one starts to leave the room. The hard part is recognizing when dignity is being abridged, particularly in the patient. So we model the moral emotions of empathy, shame and embarrassment. We tried to ensure that the empathy level in the care giver remains within acceptable bounds and that the patient shame and embarrassment doesn’t rise to unacceptable levels. So the intervening Ethical Governor intervenes when a really inappropriate event occurs. It then provides strong corrective action by the robot to encourage people to get along better. The moral adaptor component which we used in the ethical architecture—initially with the guilt model—has now been extended to other moral emotions like shame, embarrassment, guilt and empathy [in order to] try and provide more subtle non-verbal queues [to help the] robot steer the relationship in the correct way before it get out of hand.

Q7 WENG: Regarding your research on machine ethics, what kind of indicators you use to evaluate the final outputs of your project?

ARKIN: In the first one, we were designing a prototype to prove the concept of the architecture. We never make the claim that this is the best way to do it. It is just one way to do it. Then we demonstrate that particular capability through the use of simulations and other aspects. The system was not intended to be fielded, but hopefully others could take those core ideas and potentially put them to use in the real world if they so choose. For the intervening governor, we’re running human subject tests right now—not with Parkinson’s patients yet, but with the elderly population, 50 or older. We’re trying to get a better understanding of the correct sets of rules, and to correct the interventions in a normative fashion, so we can ultimately move on in the final year of the grant to work with actual Parkinson’s patients. Again, using standard HRI technics, such as recording the kinds of reactions they have and parsing the data from the sessions and using pre- and post- evaluation questionnaires.

Q8 WENG: Let’s talk about your proposed machine ethics framework. You had mentioned that it includes four main parts: (1) Ethical Governor (2) Ethical Behavior Control (3) Ethical Adaptor (4) Responsibility Advisor. First of all, what is the major difference between Ethical Governor and Ethical Behavior Control? Is it the difference between deliberative and reactive control, or something else?

ARKIN: The Ethical Governor is basically a standalone component to the architecture which is a bolt on component at the end of the existing system. In the case of military scenario: asking for permission—should it fire or not. This is an intervening stage which either grants or denies permission through the validation of permission-to-fire variable. So it is straightforward thing to be able to do. The Behavior Ethical Control is a different kind of thing as it works purely with the reactive component. What it tries to do is, for each of the individual behaviors themselves, to respond whether or not to engage a target. This is prior to dealing with the Ethical Governor making the decision; trying to make the decision correctly before it gets to the Ethical Governor, where individual behaviors are given ethical guidelines to try and ensure that the behavior is correct itself. Each of the behaviors is provided with appropriate ethical constraints. So the difference is: one is located within the reactive component in each of the individual behaviors that makes the activity of the architecture, and the Ethical Governor is at the end of the architectural chain.

Q9 WENG: What is the importance of Ethical Adaptor? What kinds of machine learning skill that you chose to improve its adaptiveness?

ARKIN: Machine learning is something we haven’t generally explored in this particular context. Especially the military context, we kind of engineer out the adaptiveness and machine learning for fear that the robot would be granted the authority to start to generalize the targets in the field, which we feel is inappropriate. Learning after action is okay. but that’s a different story. The importance of the Ethical Adaptor, and its cognitive models of guilt that we use, is the fact that even the actions the agent takes may inadvertently end up unethical. This is referred to as a “moral luck”. It could be good luck or bad luck. But if it is bad luck, you want to be able to ensure proactively that the bad action doesn’t occur again. That’s actually the functions of cognitive guilt for people as well to reduce the likelihood of reoccurrence of a behavior that resulted in bad actions. By giving this to a robot we hope that if it makes a mistake it will not repeat it. The probability of that behavior reoccurring would be reduced.

The best example is the case of battle damage assessment for a military scenario. For example, if a robot does its assessment and it looks like a released weapon wouldn’t create too much collateral damage, within acceptable limits, then it will release the weapon. But after it does it, the battle damage action is actually more severe then, it initially appeared to be. Under those circumstances, we want the robot in the field to reduce the probability of releasing the weapon again under similar circumstances. That’s, in essence, the analogue of guilt we use, and eventually, it will get to the point that the robot will not engage targets at all. Again, the software is updated to make sure the use is consistent with Geneva convention.

Q10 WENG: The Laws of War (LOW) and Rules of Engagement (ROE) are written in the form of natural language. How did you transfer these norms into machine readable formats?

ARKIN: It’s important to keep it in mind that we do not try and capture all the Rules of Engagement and all the Laws of War. We always advocate that the system should be used in very narrow circumstances and very narrow situations, such as building clearing operations or counter-sniper operations. It’s impossible to capture all human morality and all the Laws of War at this particular point of time. So, the question is what are the relevant Laws of War and Rules of Engagement for these particular narrow situations that the robot will find itself in.

Let’s take a room clearing operation. We try and do this using these constraint-based approaches. The Laws of War basically say that if you see a civilian, you should not shoot them; if you see a surrendered person, you should not shoot them. For aerial vehicles, if you are outside the kill zone (this is the simulations we did) which is designated by the Rules of Engagement, you cannot fire your weapon—explain simply why you cannot do that. If you release the weapon a toward a legitimate target but it would result in damage of cultural property, like a mosque or church or some similar circumstance, that is illegal as well. You are forbidden from doing those sort of things.

So, the initial work we did was more for aerial circumstances. We also computed the collateral damage using a battle damage assessment strategy to determine whether if it is within acceptable limits for a particular target and to restrain the weapon for proportionality. To be able to do this you have to be able to understand the military necessity of the target, which is assigned by a human being. You have to be able to understand the proportionality of the weapon. In other words: Which weapon is sufficient to take out the target but to do no more damage of the surroundings than is absolutely necessary? You have to ensure that you don’t destroy cultural property as well. Basically, adhere to all necessary principles, such as discrimination which is to be able to tell apart combatants and non-combatants. We also state we should restrict the use of these particular systems for high-intensity combat operations, or inter-state warfare, and not the kind of circumstances you find in modern counter- insurgency operations. They should be used with great care and great caution in very narrow circumstances where the predictability of their performance is far more likely to be good.

Q11 WENG: Why did you choose case-based reasoning (CBR) but not rule-based reasoning (RBR) when you designed Responsibility Advisor?
ARKIN: Historically we used case-based reasoning a lot for a variety of different reasons. Part of the reason is to gain information from previous experts. One of the examples in the past was to work with snipers in the laboratory. We can work with experts. It can be legal experts, it can be medical experts, it can be military experts. Again, the primary reason is to be able to readily use the experience of warfighters to guide us in operations.

Q12 WENG: Finally, your proposal “Governing Lethal Behavior: Embedding Ethics in a Hybrid Deliberative/Reactive Robot Architecture” was published in 2007. There have been great technological improvements in artificial intelligence in the past decade. Are there any recent updates from your robot ethics research, or anything that you want to share with us?

ARKIN: The project ended around 2010, so there is additional information. As I say, I would encourage those who are really interested to take a look at the book entitled “Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots” . That represents the final statement and outcome for that particular project and includes the significant technical details describing that work. Recent advances include the application in other domains, such as the caregiver-patient relationship [discussed above] using the same underlying principles, including both the Moral Adaptor and Ethical Governor in a slightly different. If we were successful, it may also be useful for assisting other human-human relationships, such as a parent and a teenager who may be at odds with one another or even in marriage consulting. We hope to use robots for the benefit of mankind, whether it’s to make sure that warfare is conducted within internationally agreed upon laws, or whether it’s to ensure that people behave appropriately toward each other

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How do we regulate robo-morality?

Yueh-Hsuan Weng — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 16:20:50 +0000

In April 2016, British Standards Institution (BSI) published the world’s first ethical standard for the design, production, sale, and usage of social robots. “BS 8611: 2016 Robots and robotic devices” gives guidelines to identify ethical hazards and reduce associated risks to acceptable levels. BS 8611 could be crucial in determining the nature of emerging human-robot relationships. However, the publication also raises many new questions. Are there any conflicts with ISO 13482 when incorporating BS 8611 into the design of safer robots? Should we consider regulating robot ethics? If so, how?

In this interview, we invite Prof. Joanna Bryson to share her insights on how to regulate future human-robot relationships.

Date: December 9^th 2016.

Interviewee: Prof. Joanna J. Bryson, Reader at Department of Computer Science, University of Bath, and affiliate of the Center for Information Technology and Policy, Princeton University.

Interviewer: Dr. Yueh-Hsuan Weng, Co-founder of ROBOLAW.ASIA and Fellow at CLAST AI & Law Research Committee (Beijing) and Tech and Law Center (Milan).

Prof. Joanna Bryson. Image: University of Bath

Q1 WENG: Thank you for agreeing to an interview with us. Can you tell us a little about your background?

BRYSON: My primary academic interest is comparative intelligence. I was particularly interested in animal behavior as a student, and took a liberal arts degree from Chicago with a major in the Behavioural Sciences. I now have two degrees in Artificial Intelligence (including my PhD at MIT) and another masters degree in Psychology (both masters are from Edinburgh.) I’m currently an Associate Professor at Bath where I founded the Intelligent Systems group, and organized Artificial Models of Natural Intelligence, which is basically my own laboratory.

During my PhD I was working on a humanoid robot project and was astonished that people thought they had moral obligations to the robot, even though it did not function at all. It was just a bunch of motors welded together in the shape of a human. I began publishing about this problem, thinking that people didn’t know enough about AI, but in recent years I’ve realised they don’t understand enough about ethics. They are confused about what is really the root of ethical obligation, and they do not understand the nature of artefacts. They do not understand that we can construct both AI and ethics so that we either are or aren’t obliged to AI. I have become well-known for arguing that we are ethically obliged to construct AI we are not ethically obliged to.

Q2 WENG: What is the meaning of “ethical hazards”? Except deception and anthropomorphism, what are other ethical hazards in BS 8611: 2016?

BRYSON: I have to admit I haven’t memorised that document and don’t have time to go back to read it now. Maybe you are talking about a moral hazard? A moral hazard is something likely to make you do the wrong thing. In particular, I have argued that attributing ethical status to AI is a moral hazard, because it allows us to escape the responsibilities we ourselves have as the manufacturers, builders and operators of AI. This is particularly obvious in the case of military weapons – we have enough trouble with distributing blame between soldiers, their commanders, and the government that commissions them. Making weapons themselves “sinks” for guilt is not honest or beneficial. But there are also moral hazards associated with owning “friends” and “lovers” – if children relate mostly with things they own, how will they grow to be able to be equal partners with their spouse or coworkers, or members of a democracy?

Q3 WENG: Some members from Bristol Robotics Laboratory are particularly interested in “embedded intelligence”? Why is this concept important? Does it have any impact on BS 8611: 2016?

BRYSON: I’m sorry, I don’t think it matters particularly whether AI is embedded in an artefact or “channelled” through the cloud, except obviously there are privacy issues when we connect AI onto the Internet or into any shared digital memory. In fact, one of the ways I recommend ensuring that we have no ethical obligation to robots or other AI is to ensure there is never a unique copy: that it should be backed up to remote sites at all times.

Q4 WENG: Prof. John Holland said, “..an internal model allows a system to look ahead to the future consequences of current actions, without actually committing itself to those actions”. Can you tell us about the concept of “internal model”? Does a passive dynamic robot have its own internal model as well?

BRYSON: Ha, that’s a great question! The idea of an internal model is just a representation that allows, as Prof Holland says, a means for planning around and anticipating the world. Rodney Brooks famously recommended that AI should not have a model, should use the world as it’s own best model, but in fact that is not practical. There’s not enough information in a sensory signal to disambiguate a world sufficiently to create animal-like intelligence, we need prior expectations to interpret the sensory input. Still, Brooks was a genius of AI and the field moved forward much faster when we realised we could use minimalist representations; just those necessary for action. We realised that humans “flush” our memory quickly if sensory information contradicts it, and operate on partial knowledge all the time. Previously we though AI had to have perfect knowledge so it could make perfect plans, but now we understand that that isn’t tractable.

So does a passive dynamic have an internal model? No. It is a model of an animal walking system, but to some extent it embodies expectations about for example gravity, but by and large it can do no planning or control. It arrives only where it goes and never knows that it has gotten there or been anywhere else, so certainly cannot anticipate anything. But its design anticipates particular regularities about the world, so its designers had models that are partly embodied in the walker.

Q5 WENG: I conducted an empirical case study on humanoid robots and regulation with researchers from Waseda University. We found that inside “Tokku” Special Zones there were strong demands for regulating robotics in road traffic, privacy, tele-communication, safety, tax, highway traffic, etc… However, it is not clear that whether robot ethics should be regulated. Do you have any comments on this?

BRYSON: Unfortunately I also haven’t had time to read your study yet, but I can talk a bit about regulation. There are two important things to recognise. First, government should not be thought of as an imposition, particularly in a democracy, but even in an autocracy government only functions to the extent it is tolerated. Government and regulation is the way we citizens coordinate our desires and vision. Many people in technology seem to think of regulation only as limits on their freedom, and indeed even the word compromise can be used in both a negative and a positive way. But technologists need to understand that when people come together and work together, they often create something of mutual benefit, public goods that are greater than the summed contribution of those who are cooperating. Regulations can include those that mandate investment of government resources (our taxes) in innovation. They can be liberating as well as constraining. Coming to agreements with fellow citizens about essential matters like privacy and the distribution of wealth that AI has huge impact on is essential, and yes, agreements require compromise, but it is through these that we create peace, stability, and affluence.

Having said all that, what I get from surveys of citizens is not information about what regulations would really work. Governance and regulation are extremely complex and have been studied for centuries; it is as crazy to suggest that ordinary citizens construct regulations as that they construct nuclear weapons or that random people be drafted to represent a country in the World Cup or the Olympics. We need to respect expertise as well as the desires of ordinary citizens. What the fears and goals of citizens tell us is how easy or hard it would be to implement particular regulations, how likely they are to be accepted and respected. Most people on the planet believe that their ancestors still have concerns with their own behaviour, but I wouldn’t want to build policy relying on dead ancestors as actors. But it does make sense to know people think this if you are governing.

Q6 WENG: What’s your definition of “ethical robots”? Should we teach them right from wrong?

BRYSON: I think it makes more sense to program than to teach. We have enough trouble teaching citizens and governments to do good. Most actions have ethical consequences and there is no problem in building AI to recognise and reason about these, but I would never recommend holding the AI as morally responsible, even though I think AI will necessarily take actions with moral consequences. As the British EPSRC Principles of Robotics make clear, the responsibility for commercial products lies either in their manufacturer (if they fail to meet an advertised specification) or in their owner / operator (if they are improperly used.) There are ethical implementations of AI, for example protecting the privacy of the individual, or limiting the damage an individual can do with an autonomous vehicle, but the AI itself should not be designated the responsible party in any circumstance.

Q7 WENG: Do you believe that Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics will be guiding principles to ensure the safety and security of human-robot interactions?

BRYSON: Asimov’s laws certainly impact how people think about AI ethics; the first three (of five) Principles of Robotics reflect (and correct) Asimov’s laws. But we are working hard to make people understand that these laws are by no means necessary or sufficient for AI ethics. First of all, Asimov’s laws are intractable. It’s computationally impossible to implement them as described in the books, we can never know all the consequences of our actions. Second, the books themselves show repeatedly that the laws are insufficient to create truly moral behaviour, that’s the fun of the short stories. And third, Asimov like most science fiction writers uses AI as a stand-in for humans, for examining what it is to be human. The laws describe the robot as the responsible party, and that’s as I said earlier a mistake.

Q8 WENG: Do you agree that robots should not be legal persons? Why?

BRYSON: I don’t know for sure whether people shall make them legal persons, but I am certain that they should not, and in the long run will not be. A legal person is something that is subject to human justice, and I do not believe it is possible in a well-designed system to create the kind of suffering that is intrinsic to human punishment. There is no necessity for robots or AI to know shame, pain, regret for the passage of time. These things are completely intrinsic to being human, we do not consider people with deficits in these concerns to be mentally healthy. This is because we have evolved to be social organisms and there is no way to extract these properties from our intelligence. But well-designed AI is modular, anything that is deliberately added by a designer can be removed. So that’s one reason it would be incoherent for AI to be a legal person. Another reason is that there is no discrete unit of AI or robots like there is for humans. We know what it is to be a human being, though we are sometimes a little challenged by people who are brain dead or conjoined twins. But AI cannot be neatly counted like humans, and therefore the idea of taxing a robot like a person is ludicrous. And, again, it is a moral hazard. The companies who decide to employ robotics should be the ones who have legal and economic liability for whatever their robots do. We should not let them wiggle out of their responsibility because of our love for science fiction or our deep desire to construct perfect, obedient, cyber “children”.

Q9 WENG: What is the definition of “well-designed robots” in your opinion?

BRYSON: A robot is well-designed if the company that produces it is willing to take full responsibility for its actions, and further if governments are willing to license it as safe for human society. That second requirement is necessary because some corporations have more resources than many countries, so may be willing to accept risks that individual citizens would prefer not to be subject to.

Q10 WENG: Finally, what will be the biggest challenge to developing a human-robot co-existence Society in the following decade?

BRYSON: We still have many challenges. I think we will solve dexterity and physical safety before we solve cyber security. I don’t think we have a full grasp yet about what impact we are already having on human society and human autonomy. It’s difficult to measure this because so many things are changing at once; we also have the problems of climate change, of massive increases in human numbers and access to communication. We are currently in a period of grotesque income inequality and political polarisation – some people blame these on AI, but in fact this happened only a century ago, and probably contributed to the two world wars and the great depression. So getting on top of understanding how we are influencing each other and compromising our health with our planets’ is essential to answering this question.

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One being for two origins: A new perspective on roboethics

Yueh-Hsuan Weng — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 09:00:50 +0000

The concept One Being for Two Origins, from the teachings of Buddha, considers the unification of technology, nature, and human beings. It emerges from the theory of the three aspects: The values of the “Good”, the “Bad”, and “Muki” (Avyakata). The theory of One Being for Two Origins follows the theory of the three aspects and explains a mechanism for how values, such as the good and the bad, emerge in reality using the three aspects. The theory has a contradictory structure, hence it can be difficult for those with a scientific background to fully comprehend it. In this interview, Nagoya University’s Associate Professor Hiroko Kamide shares with us her insights on robot ethics, with a focus on One Being for Two Origins.

Date: December 5^th 2016

Interviewee: Prof. Hiroko Kamide, Designated Associate Professor, Nagoya University, Japan

Interviewer: Dr. Yueh-Hsuan Weng, Co-founder of ROBOLAW.ASIA and Fellow at CLAST AI & Law Research Committee (Beijing) and Tech and Law Center (Milan)

Q1 WENG: Thank you for agreeing to an interview with us. Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

KAMIDE: My background is social psychology. During my doctoral course, I studied close relationships and well-being. After receiving my PhD, I started researching human-robot interaction and collaborated with engineers to help realize so-called “human-friendly robots”. We established psychological methods to evaluate humanoids, and subsequently developed human-friendly behaviors for robots. I still collaborate with engineers to consider the adaptive way of introducing advanced technology, such as robots and self-driving cars, from an interdisciplinary approach.

Q2 WENG: Currently you are also in charge of a special interest group on robots and philosophy at The Robotics of Japan (RSJ). Can you tell us something about your RSJ Special Interest Group on Philosophy in Robotics?

KAMIDE: In the RSJ group, we discuss the approach to technology from an interdisciplinary standpoint. The members are from psychology, philosophy, law, sociology, and engineering. Psychological evaluation, like technological advancement, is important to realize robots that your average person can accept in their daily-life. This collaborative work between psychology and engineering is crucial to developing technologies that can satisfy a human’s needs and expectations. But sometimes we experience terrible events that we cannot control: nuclear accidents, wrongful use of robots, etc. Therefore we started to investigate what the appropriate approach is when implementing and dealing with the cutting-edge technology. It’s a the responsibility of researchers to convey information to ordinary users about how we should deal with technology in order to maintain harmony between technology, nature, and humans.

Q3 WENG: What is the theory One Being for Two Origins? Why is it important to the unification of humanity and nature?

KAMIDE: The theory of One Being for Two Origins has a contradictory structure, and it’s difficult for those with a scientific background to fully understand. At the first step, we begin with a theory of values—the theory of the three aspects—as an introduction to the theory of One Being for Two Origins. The theory of three aspects explains the mechanism of how values, such as good and bad, emerge from the three concepts of the good, the bad, and the “Muki”. Then the theory of One Being for Two Origins follows the theory of three aspects as the fundamental mechanism of order. Through the theory of One Being for Two Origins, we become able to recognize the truth and biases behind language, and as such can avoid conflicts between technology, nature and human-beings.

Q4 WENG: Your paper “One Being for Two Origins – A necessary awakening for the future of robotics” has been presented at the 2016 IEEE ARSO Workshop in Shanghai, China. The co-author is Professor Masahiro Mori, who is a world famous roboticist because of his “uncanny valley” theory. How come you decided to choose this topic? Does the concept One Being for Two Origins have any relationship with “uncanny valley”?

KAMIDE: His theory of uncanny valley has a very thoughtful and groundbreaking perspective, therefore many researchers in the world still refer to his theory. As for my impression, he developed a very clear sense of perspectives that leads us to understand the theory of uncanny valley. His method of observing the truth of the world is in line with the teachings of the Buddha.

Q5 WENG: Regarding regulation for robotics, you pointed out that there is widespread misunderstanding from regulators. What is the misunderstanding? What kind of legal crisis will materialize if they don’t change their way of thinking? How can your proposed theory help solve this legal crisis?

KAMIDE: As the theory of three aspects explains, the value of good and bad are just derived from Muki, that transcends such values and is a true quality of the technology. Useful technology is positive. On the other hand, it would be bad if technology harms people. Technology is fundamentally neither good nor bad. It’s the manner in which technology is applied and operated by humans that is either good or bad. It is humans themselves that attribute these aspects to the technology.

Regulations are attempts to eliminate the bad aspects of technology. However, it is not correct to assume that only the good remains when the bad is eliminated, because technologies themselves are the Muki. And if bad did not exist, good would not exist either, as one is parasitic on the other. To eliminate the bad is to interfere in the working of the Muki in producing these values. The same occurs robots.

Our mindset determines how we approaches the Muki. If we are not mentally prepared, Muki will transform into bad. If we are mentally prepared, we can treat the Muki as good. Bad can transform into good then, of course, good can also transform into bad. And the more good qualities a robot possesses, the stronger its bad qualities will be, following the transformation. Sharp scalpels save lives, but sharp daggers kill people. This is because the working of the Muki is powerful.

In all cases, the mindset of humans is crucial. So, the responsibility of us in robotics is to ensure that technology is not used in bad ways. We must both establish methods of using robots, and work to refine users’ mindsets.

Q6 WENG: Robotics is like a double-edged sword, it can either help or kill people. Robotic lethal weapons present a dilemma. Should they be banned or not? Do you have any comment on this?

KAMIDE: The problem is not in robotics but in ourselves—we who raise such dualistic questions. As I mentioned, the technology of robotics doesn’t have any values. Robotics is not double edged sword at all; our minds are double edged. People easily attribute these values to the physical entity but it is not true. We have to try and observe the fact that we see not what we see, but what we want to see.

Q7 WENG: Do you agree with using dualism as the meta-principle to teach robots right from wrong? If not, do you think it is possible to adopt your theory into creating ethical robots’?

KAMIDE: The “right” and “wrong” is always in the eye of the beholder, and there are no absolute standards. As long as humans accept that they are subject to subjective mechanisms of perceiving the world, it won’t be troublesome to develop ethical robots. But if humans see the “right” and “wrong” as existing independently, objective, it will be definitely problematic.

Q8 WENG: What are major challenges for implementing One Being for Two Origins into robot ethics?

KAMIDE: Clarifying the importance of applying wisdom, not just knowledge. In this theory, knowledge refers to the ability to divide the phenomena into detailed classifications in order to understand the difference between things. On the other hand, wisdom is necessary to discover the meaning in the different things. Knowledge is developed through education, usually, but wisdom is not taught explicitly. Therefore, we are accustomed to dualistic thinking based on knowledge, that divides the world into its constituent parts, but we have difficulty uniting the parts using wisdom, in a way of monism. This is one of reason that we often raise dualistic questions, and eventually develop conflicts.

Q9 WENG: Professor Shigeo Hirose gave an insight called “Morality Engineering” in his short review “A Dialog on Robots” Vol. 7, No. 4, JRSJ. Do you think that One Being for Two Origins might be helpful in implementing his proposal of “Morality Engineering”?

KAMIDE: His article is very interesting. Opinions from both sides who are optimistic or pessimistic to a robotized future society are quite realistic and thoughtful. Recently many philosophers have started to think about morality in robotics. His “Morality Engineering” suggests implementing “rational egoism”, and I agree with the importance of this approach. One Being for Two Origins is the methodology to transcendent and unify opposite aspects of the phenomena to see the truth. So it is helpful to consider how “rational egoism” truly functions in the interactions between humans and robots.

Click here to read Hiroko Kamide’s paper “One being for two origins — A necessary awakening for the future of robotics”.

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When robots become art: Interview with Yi-Wei Keng

Yueh-Hsuan Weng — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 18:44:15 +0000

Hiroshi Ota and Minako Inoue with 2 Robovie R3 robots in Oriza Hirata’s “I, Worker”

How can robotics help to enhance the development of the modern arts? Japan’s famous playwright, stage director Oriza Hirata and leading roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro launched the “Robot Theater Project” at Osaka University to explore the boundary between human-robot interactions through robot theater. Their work includes renditions of Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters”, Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, and their own play “I, Worker”. Their work has spread internationally to Paris, New York, Toronto and Taipei.

For this interview, we would like to invite their collaboration partner Yi-Wei Keng, director of Taipei Arts Festival, to share his insights on the intersection of robotics and the arts.

Interviewee: Mr. Yi-Wei Keng, Artistic Director of Taipei Arts Festival (TAF)

Interviewer: Dr. Yueh-Hsuan Weng, Co-founder of ROBOLAW.ASIA Initiative and Fellow at CLAST AI & Law Research Committee (Beijing) and Tech and Law Center (Milan)

Interviewer: Ms. Diane Chiang, Guest Editor at ROBOLAW.ASIA Initiative

WENG: Thank you for agreeing to an interview. Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

KENG: I have diverse backgrounds. I studied civic engineering in my first year at university and changed my focus to philosophy in my second year. After graduation and military service, I went to Prague to study non-verbal theater. I dedicated myself to disabled theater when I came back from Europe at the beginning of 2000s’. This multi-discipline experience helped me to think of arts in broader sense.

WENG: Can you introduce Taipei Arts Festival to our readers? What are the collaborations between Taipei Arts Festival and Robot Theatre project in recent years?

KENG: Taipei Arts Festival is the city’s festival, and was established in 1998. TAF gets its entire budget from the Taipei city government. I became the artistic director in 2012 and invited “Three Sisters, Android version” by Oriza Hirata and Hiroshi Ishiguro in 2013. Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro also visited TAF and gave public talks about his robotics work. Then in 2015 we invited their “La Metamorphose version Androide” to TAF.

WENG: What caused you to collaborate with Mr. Oriza Hirata? Did you face any challenges in implementing the piece into Taipei Arts Festival?

KENG: Well, it was really an accident. My wife read an article about the Robot Theatre Project in Monthly Art Magazine Bijutsu Techo. She told me about this and I did some research. I thought it was an interesting project, then I found Seinendan through my connections in Japan. Oriza Hirata gave a very positive response about our invitation. Everything went well during the festival, that is why we decided to invite Seinendan again in 2015.

WENG: Taiwan’s choreographer Yi Huang had used his KUKA robot companion to design his “Huang Yi & KUKA” robot choreography. Can you introduce more examples of robot choreography to us?

KENG: For example, French company Cie 111 made the “Sans Objet” in 2009, it was also a dance show with 2 dancers and an industrial robot, like Yi Huang’s KUKA project in 2013. French choreographer Blanca Li made the “Robot” in 2013 where the NAO Robot by Aldebaran Robotics to dance with real dancer.

WENG: In Japan, an art theater in Tokyo performed a theatrical rendition of Osamu Tezuka’s “Black Jack”. The character “Pinoko” was played by a robot created by Waseda University’s Takanishi Laboratory. The arms, legs, and body of the Takanishi Laboratory developed robot are detachable and equipped with 25 motors, so the robot can vividly resemble the Black Jack character. With your experience and expertise in performance art, what are your thoughts on this?

KENG: What surprises people most about robots or puppets is that we know they are objects but they act like they have soul inside. But if there were many robots in our life, then robots on stage would not be such a surprise. What matters is when the robot looks like a human being, then robot theater loses its meaning too because people can’t tell the difference from appearance. There are more and more animation films, but there is a psychological need to see real humans in films. That is what happens in animation film, we don’t want to see the animation, which shoots like the real movie, we want to experience the pleasure of difference and surprise.

CIANG: Is there a correlation between robotic theater and anthropology? If so, what is it? Can you share your insights from a puppetry aesthetics perspective?

KENG: As I say, if a robot looks like the real people on stage, then it loses its attraction for the audience. It is the same for puppet theater: the movement and design should remain dumpy and eccentric. In the future, androids in everyday life may confuse people if we can’t tell the difference between robots and human beings. We might kill someone which we declare as a robot, but in fact is a human being. Why is robot theater important? Because we could use theater to show the fictional situation which may happen in the future and discuss its meaning and possibility through story.

CIANG: In the 2016 Taipei Film Festival, there is a movie featuring a robot called “Sayonara”. This movie is an extension of Hirata and Ishiguro’s Robot Theater Project. They use an android as an actress in the movie. To human actors, what is the difference between 3D robotic theater and a 2D movie when they play with the android?

KENG: When you see the robot in a theater you confront the reality, and the statement from story becomes stronger than in the movie. There is a life event in theater but film is an illusion made by projecting lights on a screen.

CIANG: Can you tell us something about ethics debates in robot theater? Why do ethics matter to robot theater?

KENG: The main issue is the role of actors in theater. In 1908, theorist Gordon Craig declared that the Über-Marionette should replace the real actor in the future. But acting is not only imitation but also a creative process. Ethics about robot theater can help us to understand more about the essence of theater, robots and humanity.

CIANG: Do you think that it is possible to improve the performance of robots in society by borrowing experiences from performance theory?

KENG: If a robot wants to become human, they must look like a human and act like a human. So “act” has something to do with acting. According to the theory of mirror neuron, the audience can react with the acting from the stage, because their body acts the same way when similar situations happen, so the audience reacts. Acting technique divides from inside-out like Stanislavky system and outside-in like the Delsarte method. The performance theory of François Delsatre might help better than the inside-out technique since robots don’t act by feeling.

WENG: Researchers at the University of Oxford found that 47% of U.S. jobs are at risk of AI and automation in the next two decades. Do you agree that in the field of arts and drama, many future job opportunities will be replaced by robots? Or do you rather believe that new technology will create more opportunities for humans?

KENG: There are many puppet theaters in different cultures, and there exist theaters with real actors in these cultures too. There is no contradiction between having a robot actor and real actor. The emergence of robot actors could create a revolution in acting theory. The problem is not technology, but how we treat them.

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A European perspective on robot law: Interview with Mady Delvaux-Stehres

Yueh-Hsuan Weng — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 18:29:21 +0000

10 years after the release of the EURON Roboethics Roadmap and we are witnessing a technology revolution. In the last 10 years, we’ve seen: Google’s self-driving car, Amazon’s KIVA system, drones, SoftBank’s Pepper, Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, ROSS System and AlphaGo technology. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a concept in science fiction but the next wave to change our society. More interestingly, the intersection of AI & law will not only affect how people think but also, what people do in their daily lives, how they will behave.

For this interview, we invited Ms. Mady Delvaux-Stehres to share her insights on European perspectives in robot law.

Interviewee: Ms. Mady Delvaux-Stehres, Member of the European Parliament, Vice-Chair of the Committee on Legal Affairs, Chair of the Working Group on robotics

Interviewer: Dr. Yueh-Hsuan Weng, the Co-founder of Peking University’s ROBOLAW.ASIA Initiative, a founding member of The AI & Law Research Committee, China Law Association on Science and Technology (CLAST), Beijing, China and Tech and Law Fellow

Weng: Thank you for agreeing to our interview. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?

Delvaux-Stehres: I am not a scientist, but I am fascinated by new technologies and their implications in our daily life. In fact, I studied classical literature (Latin, Greek and French) and I was a teacher until 1989, when I moved to politics. I held several ministerial roles (Social Security, Transport, Telecommunication and Education) before joining the European Parliament in 2014.

Weng: You are Rapporteur of the “DRAFT REPORT with Recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics”. This report has recently received great attention from international communities. Can you briefly introduce the report to us? Does it aim for creating a legal framework to support human-robot co-existence? When will its final version be released?

Delvaux-Stehres: The report aims at providing guidelines and recommendations to the European Commission on a legal framework for robotics. It covers a wide range of different areas, such as liability rules, ethical questions, standardisation and safety, data protection, human enhancement or education and employment.

Until October, the other committees of the European Parliament concerned with the issue (Committee on Employment and Social Affairs; Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety; Committee on Industry, Research and Energy; Committee on Transport and Tourism) have time to give their opinion on the report. The vote in the Committee on Legal Affairs is scheduled for end of October, and the vote in plenary is January 2017.

Weng: There is another report called “D 6.2 – Guidelines on Regulating Robotics” (2014), which is the final output of European FP7 Project: ROBOLAW. Is this report and your draft report both recommended guidelines for the European Parliament? What is the difference between them?

Delvaux-Stehres: The Robolaw research project was funded by the European Commission. It aimed at providing the European Commission with guidelines and suggestions for the regulation of robotic technologies.

In fact, the outcome of this project laid the cornerstone of our work in the European Parliament.

I learned about the Robolaw project in a workshop in autumn 2014. Their results were very inspiring and it would have been a shame not to react to their great efforts and work.

With the own-initiative report, the European Parliament aims at expressing its own position regarding the creation of a legal framework on robotics and AI by providing guidelines and recommendations to the European Commission.

Weng: Does its title “recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics” mean that the resolution establishes general and ethical principles regarding the development of AI and robotics for civil use by private law? However, even if their applications are only for civil use, regulators may still need to consider public laws as well. For example, FAA’s regulations for commercial drones, and UNECE’s motor vehicle regulations are beyond civil law domain. How do you see public law’s role in regulating AI and robotics for civil use?

Delvaux-Stehres: We exclude the military use of robots (robots as weapons) from the report and only focus on the civil use of robots. This is the reason of the report’s title.

Regarding the regulation of robotics and AI, both private and public law play a key role. For instance, driverless cars: the Vienna Convention on road traffic is not compatible with any form of higher automation. Car manufacturers are developing cars that are able to drive autonomously but first the laws need to change to allow testing these new types of vehicles on public roads. Besides, we need clarification of all the liability questions arising with the development of automated vehicles, like the well-known question of: “Who is liable in case of an accident?”

Weng: I have been conducting an empirical case study on legal impacts to humanoid robots with researchers at the Humanoid Robotics Institute, Waseda University in Tokyo. In order to reduce conflicts between advanced robots and existing laws, the Japanese government has approved to establish the world’s first RT special zone in Fukuoka in 2003. The history of RT special zone is only 13 years long, but there are already many special zones established in Fukuoka, Osaka, Gifu, Kanagawa and Tsukuba. Also, many potential legal problems can be discovered in advance via the “Deregulation” inside RT special zones. Do you think that it is feasible to establish some deregulation RT special zones in Europe?

Delvaux-Stehres: In my opinion, testing robots in real life scenarios is essential for the identification and assessment of the risks they might entail, as well as their technological development beyond a pure experimental laboratory phase. We definitely need to know more about Human-Robot-Co-Existence. This is why we call on the European Commission to draw up uniform criteria across all Member States, of which, the individual Member States should use to identify areas where testing robots are permitted in real-life conditions.

Weng: Can you tell us why there is a need to create a new category or legal status for intelligent robots? What’s the major difficulty to have it under current EU legal system?

Delvaux-Stehres: In the future, more and more robots are able to make smart autonomous decisions or interact with third parties independently. A crucial question arises from this trend: Should the owner still be liable for damage caused by his smart robot? The creation of an e-personality for robots, at least for those robots with a higher degree in artificial intelligence and with self-learning capabilities, could be a possible way forward. However, in a first step, it is important to regulate more imminent current problems related to robotics like self-driving cars or drones. The e-personality for robots could be an option later, in a second step.

Weng: I am interested in your proposal for establishing an EU Agency for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Can you tell us more about this concept?

Delvaux-Stehres: The Agency should be staffed with engineers and specialists in robotics, but also with lawyers and philosophers in order to reflect on all the questions related to AI and robotics. A European Agency for Robotics has the potential to provide guiding principles to the European Commission and European Member States. Moreover, it could be the European interlocutor on the international level, especially with regard to the cooperation in establishing international standards.

Weng: Why is it necessary to draft laws that regulate artificial intelligence and robotics?

Delvaux-Stehres: The current legislation is not fit to cope with the emergence of smart autonomous robots and artificial intelligence. For instance, testing autonomous vehicles on public roads is not compatible with the Vienna Convention on road traffic. If we don’t act promptly, there is a risk that the economic potential and positive effects of robotics will not be fully realised in Europe. Besides the economic aspect, we need a clear framework to ensure the protection of the right to privacy, data protection, and to safeguard the security of European citizens.

For more information, please visit TLC Forum for Robots & Society.

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