Law and Robotics Panel at Stanford Law School

Vincenti Winchester 2 months, 3 weeks ago on Wordpress

The artificial intelligence people at MIT are still having major problems with robots even understanding how to open a door.

It sounds easy to open a door until one realizes how many types of doors there are; the push/pull decisions; the level of the handle, etc.

The microtubules that our brains are based on function at the quantum level. At the moment we can’t even understand how these structures can function at all, because they involve superposition and entanglement.

So, the bottom line is that robots are great if we keep them in perspective.

They will always be servants that do simple things.

It is US who will program simple things to do dangerous things, like fly over a field and drop an object that goes boom. ... See all content Hide content

Reply

Laura(southernxyl) 3 months ago on Wordpress

You really, really don’t get it. Present day robots are incapable of recognizing a human, let alone recognizing that something might harm a human.

Look at the OP:

Three panelists with deep and varied expertise discuss the present, near future, and far future of robotics and the law.

I’ve known people who have no imagination, or who were made uncomfortable by SF-type speculation . These aren’t the people who move us forward.

Presumably, if a computer could be as complex as a human brain, then it could be programmed to emulate a human brain. But why would we want to?

Wasn’t it in the 1970’s that the president of IBM said there would never be a need for individuals to have computers in their homes? It’s hard to say what people will never want to do, or see value in. Look at the doll-like robots they are developing in Japan. I wouldn’t want one, but I’m not them. (They.) ... See all content Hide content

Reply

markm 3 months ago on Wordpress

I disagree about taking out “through inaction allowing a human to come to harm”. These laws are supposed to be hard-wired into EVERY robot, not only the high-functioning humanoid things. They are simple so that the rule hierarchy is easy to deal with, without a lot of cogitation.

You really, really don’t get it. Present day robots are incapable of recognizing a human, let alone recognizing that something might harm a human. Nor are they capable of recognizing threats to themselves. For instance, a robotic cart does not have a command against running over humans or running into brick walls — it just has a programmed routine that stops it when its sensors detect an object directly in front of it. Whether that’s effective or not depends on how good those sensors are, and sensors with a wide range and field of view plus enough resolution to not be firing false alarms all the time are expensive. So your cart will stop for a trash can placed in its path but quite likely will not detect a human walking on an intersecting course until too late. As for the 3rd law, it probably won’t have a sensor to detect a hole in the floor, but just follows a set path, and the designer trusts that the users will turn the carts off or re-route them before tearing up the floor.

Even with an unlimited budget, we can install better sensors, but we can’t write a program that makes sense of unexpected items appearing in them. It’s hard enough just to recognize one item at various angles and distances. Beyond that, even if a robot can identify a human and a bus (for instance), there is not even a hint of how to give a computer the reasoning power to recognize that a human standing in the path of a bus is in danger. Yes, I could probably program a robot to rush out and push a human from the path of a bus — but the program would execute without understanding and certainly be either underinclusive (that SUV is not a bus, so go ahead and stand in the road), overinclusive (“rescuing” humans from a newspaper blowing in the wind), and most likely both. All I could do is try to add clauses for all the situations I can imagine, but this will never ensure “sensible” reactions to situations I did not anticipate.

And I see no path from our current software development techniques to software that does understand the world. ... See all content Hide content

Reply

dw2 3 months ago on Twitter

reading "Law+Robotics Panel at Stanford" http://j.mp/reHyV "Unique legal challenges with widespread availability of sophisticated robots?"

Reply

z49 3 months ago on Twitter

The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Law and Robotics Panel at ... http://bit.ly/3AQBIL

Reply

uberVU - social comments 3 months ago on Wordpress

Social comments and analytics for this post...

This post was mentioned on Twitter by mglickman: Law and Robotics Panel at Stanford Law School http://ff.im/-b5UDL...

Reply

Fub 3 months ago on Wordpress

Anon: Are you worried that World of Warcraft game play across the internet is going to result in the formation of SkyNet?

Point understood.

But here’s a not entirely impossible scenario: spambots and malware gone wild.

Currently there are huge numbers of internet connected machines infested with various malwares that spew spam at the behest of their criminal human controllers . Some of these spambots are self-replicating in the limited sense that they probe other machines in some pseudorandom way to find new machines to infest. Some of the malwares even scan their hosts to destroy competing malwares.

Ridding the internet of these bot populations has so far proved impossible, even though they are controlled by (criminal) humans. A huge portion of available network bandwidth is already consumed by the operation of these criminally controlled botnets.

Now, what if they became uncontrollable, even by their criminal creators?

Consider appearance of a bug (or feature) in some population of self-propagating bots, whether introduced accidentally or intentionally, whether by spammers or by security personnel, or even by a random error in an infested machine.

The hypothetical bug causes the newly placed bots to ignore all command and control input from their original sources, and to observe commands from other bots propagated through some other channel than the original.

The self-propagating botnet is now autonomous until humans can discern the new command and control channels and mechanisms.

The botnet already has the capability to reduce available internet bandwidth by generating unwanted traffic. The primary way known to stop it is the power OFF switch on millions of computers, or alternatively to shut down millions of high bandwidth channels.

Through some process akin to natural selection among individual bots, a network of bots could evolve that could (at least temporarily) shut down commerce and communication that relies on the existing internet structure.

When population numbers and replication rates (with some errors) are high, something akin to evolution through natural selection, actually a stripped down model of biological evolution, could occur spontaneously.

I’ll agree that my proposed scenario is far-fetched, but it is not impossible. Bugs happen, even in malware. ... See all content Hide content

Reply

Texas calling 3 months ago on Wordpress

Awesome!

Looks like their setting the stage for future Software-Americans to dislike attorneys as intensely as current Wetware-Americans do today.

Reply

Tweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Law and Robotics Panel at Stanford Law School -- Topsy.com 3 months ago on Wordpress

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by JP Fendrich, Tawana Thomas. Tawana Thomas said: The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Law and Robotics Panel at ...: My husband and I watched “Colossus, the F.. http://bit.ly/2WBngh [...]

Reply

mommydaddytime 3 months ago on Twitter

The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Law and Robotics Panel at ...: My husband and I watched “Colossus, the F.. http://bit.ly/2WBngh

Reply

Anon 3 months ago on Wordpress

first history:

Assuming arguendo that there was a software glitch that caused Oerlikon “oops” — that’s no different than a mechanical failure. That has nothing to do with Asimov’s three laws and more to do with the fuel injector from my previous example.

Suppose the drive-by-wire throttle sticks wide open on your Lexus and you crash, killing yourself and others. Is that a failure that is reasonably addressed by Asimov’s three laws? Or is it merely a combination of poor design and/or operator error?

BTW, your Wilson cite doesn’t support your case. Read it carefully and figure it out on your own. ... See all content Hide content

Reply

first history 3 months ago on Wordpress

....Network-centric doesn’t mean what you think it does, and nothing we have today is any more autonomous than your Play Station (which isn’t, but can give a nice illusion).

Are you worried that World of Warcraft game play across the internet is going to result in the formation of SkyNet?

No, I am not worried that anything we have today is more autonomous than a PlayStation (which I don’t have), but I am looking at the future 20–30 years from now. See this excerpt from P.W. Singer’s Wired for War at the Wilson Quarterly.

And the danger is real. A robotic anti-aircraft gun (an Oerlikon GDF-005) in South Africa had an “oops” moment in 2007 when something went wrong and it started firing uncontrollably, killing nine SA soldiers and wounded 14:

......the brave, as yet unnamed officer was unable to stop the wildly swinging computerised Swiss/German Oerlikon 35mm MK5 anti-aircraft twin-barrelled gun. It sprayed hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells around the five-gun firing position.

By the time the gun had emptied its twin 250-round auto-loader magazines, nine soldiers were dead and 11 injured.

....

It is believed the soldiers were killed when the gun jammed moments after the exercise began.

When the female officer went forward to help the gunner clear the blockage, another shell was accidentally fired, causing some of the unspent ammunition in nearly-full magazines to explode.

This, in turn, caused a “runaway”. There was nowhere to hide.

The rogue gun began firing wildly, spraying high-explosive shells at a rate of 550 a minute, swinging around through 360 degrees like a high-pressure hose.

The unknown officer tried to shut the gun down but she couldn’t because the computer gremlin had taken over.

Oops. ... See all content Hide content

Reply

traveler496 3 months ago on Wordpress

To keep the discussion useful and grounded you might constrain it to periods during which the leading legal minds are not predominantly artificial.

(Prognostication beyond that time in most any field is difficult; and the leading legal minds of that era will in any case have limited use for what is said during this one.)

Reply

disconnect 3 months ago on Wordpress

Daniel Chapman: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.So a robot bus driver could continue on his merry way as he plowed over pedestrians along his set route?I don’t think this is as elegant a fix as you think it is.

Non sequitur. The bus driver’s actions (driving) are directly causing injury. “Through inaction” would be (e.g.) a mugging occurring down an alley; this robot would need to ensure that human’s lack of injury (which could

You know what? I’m not going to spend the last five minutes of my lunch arguing this. Instead, what I originally came here to post: Jokes Made By Robots, For Robots.

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

A robot.

Oh, shit. ... See all content Hide content

Reply

Daniel Chapman 3 months ago on Wordpress

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

So a robot bus driver could continue on his merry way as he plowed over pedestrians along his set route? I don’t think this is as elegant a fix as you think it is.

To Anon the Engineer: http://www.xkcd.com/534/

Reply

Anon 3 months ago on Wordpress

Some dude — nice “duty to rescue” move!

But seriously, what do Asimov’s three laws have to do with real robots? The Asimov stories all dealt with make-believe — sentient AIs that would almost certainly pass a Turing Test (any flavor). Asimov was interested in exploring the interactions between autonomy, self-awareness, and morals, not the boring engineering problems that we have today.

Real robots are things like automated welding machines on an assembly line. The “brains” are finite state machines — the behavior is deterministic based on the inputs. They don’t think, they just drag a welding rod across predetermined locations.

Don’t get caught up in the romance of the word “robot,” these things could be built as an elaborate mechanical clockwork. See Babbage’s difference engine. They’re not, though, because that would be very, very expensive.

It makes as much sense to apply Asimov’s three laws to real robots as it does to apply them to staplers, kitchen knives, and automobiles.

If I stab you with a knife, is that because the knife wasn’t designed with Asimov’s three laws? What if I run you over with my car?

Automobiles, of course, have robot-like features — self-park is an apparent one.

But what is a computer-controlled fuel injector? It is no less robotic than the self-park feature or a robotic welder on an assembly line, once you strip away the romance. Do we expect engineers to design fuel injectors to predict when a human could be harmed and shut off the fuel supply? ... See all content Hide content

Reply

Mike McDougal 3 months ago on Wordpress

Some dude: 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First, Second Law.

Is the robot going to step on my cat to keep itself from falling over?

Reply

Laura(southernxyl) 3 months ago on Wordpress

Are y’all going to talk about the Three Laws?

My husband and I watched “Colossus, the Forbin Project” last weekend. I hadn’t seen it since I was a girl and didn’t remember it well. I kept asking him — WHOEVER THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA? Inconceivable.

So some science fiction (Asimov) did a fairly good job of anticipating how AI would have to be designed for interaction with humans , and some didn’t.

Here is an amusing and fairly recent conception of human/robot interaction and how it could end up. ... See all content Hide content

Reply