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c-Politics-Law-Society
NTSB overturns Pirker case: Drones are aircraft
Dronologista
19 Nov 2014
The Pirker case was a landmark case in UAV legislation development. In 2011, Raphael Pirker used his Ritewing Zephyr UAV to make some aerial footage over the University of Virginia campus, and for tha...
UN discusses humanitarian uses of drones
Frank Tobe
17 Nov 2014
At a recent meeting at the United Nations, UN and UNICEF officials met with NGOs including Red Cross, food and peacekeeping groups, to discuss setting up a network of humanitarian uses for drones and...
Amazon’s Echo: A point-of-sale even the kids can relate to
Mark Stephen Meadows
14 Nov 2014
Amazon, the largest online retailer and Internet company in the USA, sells media, data, software, video games, electronics, food, toys, clothes, furniture, and jewelry. It is a big provider of cloud c...
Artificial intelligence is a tool, not a threat
Rodney Brooks
11 Nov 2014
Recently there has been a spate of articles in the mainstream press, and a spate of high profile people who are in tech but not AI, speculating about the dangers of malevolent AI being developed, and ...
Would you trust a robot to take care of your grandpa?
Open Roboethics Initiative
11 Nov 2014
One of the driving forces of social, interactive robotics is the issue of impending labour shortage, which is projected to be one of the major and inevitable consequences of the ageing population phe...
RoboLaw: Why and how to regulate robotics
Andrea Bertolini
29 Oct 2014
The issue is often raised whether robotics needs to be regulated. While some believe that there is no need to intervene because regulation may stifle innovation, others believe that indeed there is ne...
When it comes to regulating robotics, multiple questions are at issue
Frank Tobe
28 Oct 2014
Earlier this month the Brookings Institute published a paper by Ryan Calo titled "The case for a federally regulated robotics commission". As much as I appreciate the thoughtfulness and readability of...
A horse of a different color: Ryan Calo on What robotics can learn from cyberlaw | Slate
CIS Blog
27 Oct 2014
In the early days of dot-com, the law found the Internet unsettling. That a buyer in one location could access the website of a seller in any other forced courts to revisit basic questions of jurisdic...
This military robotics company vows to never make a killer robot | Fast Company
CIS Blog
23 Oct 2014
Cars are already close to driving themselves down the highway. How far are we then from military weapons systems that decide on their own when and where to fire?
"You want the scary answer?" asks C...
Driven by care needs, will it be the booming senior population that spurs wider acceptance of robots?
Abate De Mey
19 Oct 2014
Tony Prescott, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Director of the Sheffield Center of Robotics believes that [tweetquote]the medical industry could be at the forefront of changing the public per...
Friday Q&A: Law Professor Ryan Calo | Roll Call
CIS Blog
17 Oct 2014
Ryan Calo is an assistant law professor at the University of Washington School of Law whose academic work looks at the legal and policy aspects of robotics. Technocrat talked to him about what he anti...
25 women in robotics you need to know about (2014)
Just last week at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella gave women some questionable career advice: "It's not really about asking for the raise, but knowing...
Robots are not here to take your jobs | USA Today
Hallie Siegel
15 Oct 2014
Robots are not here to steal our jobs, nor are we at risk of any other en masse robotic movement reliant upon self-determined mechanized cognizance.
In fact, nearly 100% of contemporary robotic tec...
Poll shows bots seen more as appliance than companion, but still good for whole family
Open Roboethics Initiative
29 Sep 2014
Primary reasons for considering to purchase a robot for the home
Why would you want to buy a robot for your home? When we asked our readers this question, the majority (75%) said that they’d wa...
Robot jurisprudence: How to judge a ’botm | The Economist
Hallie Siegel
29 Sep 2014
The concern for policymakers is creating a regulatory and legal environment that is broad enough to maintain legal and ethical norms but is not so proscriptive as to hamper innovation. It was with thi...
A call for debate on robot policy
Andra Keay
24 Sep 2014
The 1953 New Yorker cartoon that started the “Take me to your leader” meme showed two aliens newly arrived on earth asking a donkey to, effectively, give them policy guidance. This is exactly what...
Hot topic: Regulating robotics
Hallie Siegel
23 Sep 2014
Updated 24/09/14 Do robots need to be regulated? Several legal and policy experts think that robot regulations should be developed early and revised often. Others - especially those working on researc...
We need to pass legislation on artificial intelligence early and often | Slate
Hallie Siegel
23 Sep 2014
Economists and historians traditionally claim that the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution led to the creation of a large middle class in the United States. That’s only partly true. ...
Problems with precautionary principle-minded tech regulation & a Federal Robotics Commission
Hallie Siegel
23 Sep 2014
If there are two general principles that unify my recent work on technology policy and innovation issues, they would be as follows. To the maximum extent possible:
We should avoid preemptive and...
RoboLaw: EU roadmap for developing guidelines on regulating robotics
Hallie Siegel
23 Sep 2014
The investigation on the interplay between robotics and regulation moves from a request for a legal framework that can accompany the developments of robotics. The request is coming from the very actor...
Women in engineering at IROS 2014
Andra Keay
16 Sep 2014
[tweetquote]Shame that the missing engineering hero on the cover of IEEE Spectrum's July issue looks like superMAN[/tweetquote], because the IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) lunch at IROS 2014 was a su...
Impact of robocars perceived as net positive even if jobs are displaced
Open Roboethics Initiative
15 Sep 2014
Will robots take away our jobs? Will we be better off with robots even if they do?
One Forbes article published last year by Chunka Mui focused the jobs issue on autonomous cars. In the article tit...
What does the second machine age mean for our jobs? | Erik Brynjolfsson via World Economic Forum Blog
Hallie Siegel
08 Sep 2014
http://youtu.be/7UmGl-FDJ3s
If the first industrial revolution was about creating more effective power systems, such as the steam engine, then this time around the focus is on mental tasks, says Prof...
Readers support cars that communicate and self-organize
Open Roboethics Initiative
01 Sep 2014
The conventional cars that we drive today don’t really talk to one another. Sure, some of them connect to your cellphones and mp3 players. But they don’t form a communication network with neighbou...
Finally somebody debunks the Pew Research Center’s “AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs” report
Frank Tobe
25 Aug 2014
Kudos to Erik Sofge, Boston-based reporter for Popular Science Magazine. His recent story, "Sex Bots, Robo-Maids, and other Sci-Fi Myths of the Coming Robot Economy," cleverly pokes holes wh...
Clearpath’s public stance on Killer Robots sets precedence in corporate responsibility
AJung Moon
20 Aug 2014
Last week the Waterloo-based Clearpath publicly pledged not to develop lethal autonomous weapons, otherwise known as "killer robots". In an open letter to the public, Clearpath's CTO Ryan Gariepy wr...
Reader poll: How do you feel about “Swarms of Autonomous Cars”?
Open Roboethics Initiative
19 Aug 2014
A few of days ago, WIRED and Robohub covered a story about “Largest Swarm of Robots” and how self-organizing algorithms can be used by robots to form certain shapes. This inspired us to see wha...
Experts have no idea if robots will steal your job | Harvard Business Review
Hallie Siegel
18 Aug 2014
Experts disagree about the future. That might seem unextraordinary, but it’s the conclusion of a new survey on robots from Pew, and it’s more significant than it sounds. For all the talk of “ro...
If drinking and driving, ride the car that doesn’t need your input or let it go home w/o you
Open Roboethics Initiative
18 Aug 2014
For the past few months the Open Roboethics initiative and Robohub have explored the topic of autonomous cars in the form of biweekly polls. We were able to find out a lot of interesting facts about w...
Four recent videos about robots and jobs
Hallie Siegel
14 Aug 2014
Are robots coming for your job, or are they going to make your job easier? We've been following this issue since we ran our Robots and Jobs focus series, and there is no doubt that it's a topic that'...
Artificial intelligence will not turn into a Frankenstein’s monster | Alan Winfield via The Guardian
Hallie Siegel
12 Aug 2014
The doomsayers believe that humanity will be overwhelmed by creating machines that – like Terminator's Skynet – become ever-more clever and reach a singularity. They're wrong.
Read more by Alan W...
AI, robotics, and the future of jobs | Pew Research Center
Hallie Siegel
11 Aug 2014
This report covers experts’ views about advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, and their impact on jobs and employment.
The vast majority of respondents to the 2014 Future of the ...
Governmental funding of strategic robotic projects
Frank Tobe
11 Aug 2014
Many governments have determined that robotics will play a significant role in contributing to their economy and have set up projects to fund bottlenecks to speed up the process....
Reader poll: Should an autonomous car be able to drive w/o a human passenger?
Open Roboethics Initiative
05 Aug 2014
A couple of months ago, we asked our readers whether three different unlicensed groups of individuals should be able to ride in autonomous cars alone. The individuals were: a child under the legal dr...
Readers split on whether they will miss driving their non-autonomous car
Open Roboethics Initiative
04 Aug 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-MGQqaY3eo
Driving has become an integral component of our daily lives, especially in developed countries. Cars are not just a means for us to get from point A to p...
If courts are going to treat corporations like humans, they should do the same for robots | Slate
Hallie Siegel
04 Aug 2014
The idea of “legal personhood” existed in America originally to promote the work of the country’s first corporations: banks, insurance companies, water companies, and transportation companies. ...
