We Robot Conference 5: Bender’s Law

On April 8-9, Stanford Law School held the second annual robotics and law conference, We Robot. This year’s event focused on near-term policy issues in robotics and featured panels and papers by scholars, practitioners, and engineers on topics like intellectual property, tort liability, legal ethics, and privacy. The full program is here.

This post is part of Robohub’s We Robot coverage.

To everyone’s delight, the first day wrapped up with a presentation by Patric Verrone, co-producer of the popular TV-show Futurama.

Presentation: Bender’s Law
Speaker: Futurama Co-Producer Patric Verrone

Anyone familiar with the show will know that it is a goldmine of commentary on politics and robots. Verrone, who has a legal background, spoke about the ways and various instances the show thematizes robots and the law. He is funny as hell and showed some great Futurama clips, which unfortunately are not visible in the video above. Presumably for legal reasons. Which generally speaking is sad, because how could this possibly be anything other than good promotion for Futurama? In any case, blame the system, not the players, and watch the show if you haven’t! It’s awesome.

See all the We Robot coverage on Robohub →

Kate Darling

Kate Darling