Entries by Matt Scherer
Op-ed: Poll Shows Strong Support for AI Regulation Though Respondents Admit Limited Knowledge of AI
On April 11, Morning Consult released perhaps the most wide-ranging public survey ever conducted on AI-related issues. In the poll, 2200 Americans answered 39 poll questions about AI (plus a number of questions on other issues). The headline result that Morning Consult is highlighting is that overwhelming majorities of respondents supported national regulation (71% support) and […]
Op-Ed: If AI Systems Can Be “Persons,” What Rights Should They Have?
The last segment in this series noted that corporations came into existence and were granted certain rights because society believed it would be economically and socially beneficial to do so. There has, of course, been much push-back on that front. Many people both inside and outside of the legal world ask if we have given […]
Op-ed: On Robot-delivered Bombs
“In An Apparent First, Police Used A Robot To Kill.” So proclaimed a headline on NPR’s website, referring to the method Dallas police used to end the standoff with Micah Xavier Johnson. Johnson, an army veteran, shot 12 police officers Thursday night, killing five of them. After his attack, he holed himself up in a […]
The Challenge of Diversity in the AI World
Let me start this post with a personal anecdote. At one of the first AI conferences I attended, literally every single one of the 15 or so speakers who presented on the conference’s first day were men. Finally, about 3/4 of the way through the two-day conference, a quartet of presentations on the social and economic […]
Digital Analogues (Part 2): Would corporate personhood be a good model for “AI personhood”?
This post is part of the Digital Analogues series, which examines the various types of persons or entities to which legal systems might analogize artificial intelligence (AI) systems. This post is the first of two that examines corporate personhood as a potential model for “AI personhood.” Future posts will examine how AI could also be analogized […]
Digital Analogues (Intro): Artificial Intelligence Systems Should Be Treated Like…
This piece was originally published on Medium in Imaginary Papers, an online publication of Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination. Matt Scherer runs the Law and AI blog. Artificial intelligence (A.I.) systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in our economy and society, and are being designed with an ever-increasing ability to operate free of […]
Too smart for our own good?
Source: Dilbert Comic Strip on 1992-02-11 | Dilbert by Scott Adams Two stories this past week caught my eye. The first is Nvidia’s revelation of the new, AI-focused Tesla P100 computer chip. Introduced at April’s annual GPU Technology Conference, the P100 is the largest computer chip in history in terms of the number of transistors, “the product of […]
Tay the Racist Chatbot: Who is responsible when a machine learns to be evil?
By far the most entertaining AI news of the past week was the rise and rapid fall of Microsoft’s teen-girl-imitation Twitter chatbot, Tay, whose Twitter tagline described her as “Microsoft’s AI fam* from the internet that’s got zero chill.” (* Btw, I’m officially old–I had to consult Urban Dictionary to confirm that I was correctly understanding what “fam” and […]
Who’s to Blame (Part 6): Potential Legal Solutions to the AWS Accountability Problem
The law abhors a vacuum. So it is all but certain that, sooner or later, international law will come up with mechanisms for fixing the autonomous weapon system (AWS) accountability problem. How might the current AWS accountability gap be filled? The simplest solution—and the one advanced by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the not-so-subtly-named Campaign to Stop Killer Robots (CSKR)—is to […]
Who’s to Blame (Part 5): A Deeper Look at Predicting the Actions of Autonomous Weapons
Source: Dilbert Comic Strip on 2011-03-06 | Dilbert by Scott Adams An autonomous weapon system (AWS) is designed and manufactured in a collaborative project between American and Indian defense contractors. It is sold to numerous countries around the world. This model of AWS is successfully deployed in conflicts in Latin America, the Caucuses, and Polynesia without […]
Who’s to Blame (Part 4): Who’s to Blame if an Autonomous Weapon Breaks the Law?
The previous entry in this series examined why it would be very difficult to ensure that autonomous weapon systems (AWSs) consistently comply with the laws of war. So what would happen if an attack by an AWS resulted in the needless death of civilians or otherwise constituted a violation of the laws of war? Who would be […]
Who’s to Blame (Part 3): Could Autonomous Weapon Systems Navigate the Law of Armed Conflict
“Robots won’t commit war crimes. We just have to program them to follow the laws of war.” This is a rather common response to the concerns surrounding autonomous weapons, and it has even been advanced as a reason that robot soldiers might be less prone to war crimes than human soldiers. But designing such autonomous weapon […]
Who’s to Blame (Part 2): What is an “autonomous” weapon?
The following is the second in a series about the limited legal oversight of autonomous weapons. The first segment can be found here. Source: Peanuts by Charles Schulz, January 31, 2016 Via @GoComics Before turning in greater detail to the legal challenges that autonomous weapon systems (AWSs) will present, it is essential to define what “autonomous” […]
Who’s to Blame (Part 1): The Legal Vacuum Surrounding Autonomous Weapons
The year is 2020 and intense fighting has once again broken out between Israel and Hamas militants based in Gaza. In response to a series of rocket attacks, Israel rolls out a new version of its Iron Dome air defense system. Designed in a huge collaboration involving defense companies headquartered in the United States, Israel, and […]