Are robots electronic persons?

back soon. And in the meanwhile, if you couldn't tell, we're gonna be talking about robots again, robots from So it's it's a shame that Joe can't be here because he actually pitched the other show will be recording and that will come out later this week that also has to do about robots. But we're going to do our best to uphold the high standards of of robot integrity that that Joe embodies, because as we all know, Joe

is robot. He is mostly most of that is clamp uh, but they're delightful clamps uh and and really integrity is what this episode is going to be about. Yeah, it's kind of alright. So a little backstory here. Back at the end of May, uh, there was a report that came out that spurned a sparked, I should say not spurned, sparked a lot of conversation about robots and rites. And so we're gonna talk about what that was and what

was said in that report. But before we get to that, we should also mention that this episode has a lot of tie ends with tons of other episodes we have previously recorded, because, as it turns out, we love us some robots. We we talked about robots a lot here on the show about the future of technology and science. Strangely enough, Yeah, no, okay, so so we've got we've got what happens when a robot breaks the law from March of Was that was that so recently? It was

a million years? Right? Yeah? And then there's but then there's also well what steal our jobs? Which in December? And will robots take our jobs in May? Something tells me we didn't really pay attention when we recorded the second one. One of those have been a video. It might have been it could be that one is a video, or it could very well be that we recorded two episodes with the same title. I mean to be fair, this is an ongoing conversation that is getting more and

more complicated. We also have one on universal basic income, which ties into those concepts as well, absolutely, because you know when robots steal our jobs, that is when university basic income is going to be how do I get some Money's right? We also have AI Friend or Foe from April two thousand fourteen, What if the President were a robot? That was also a Joe suggestion that was also April two and more. Yes, if we listed every single episode, I mean really, just pull up our RSS

feed and search robot. I think I got hits to be fair. That also includes all the metadata, so robot shows up a lot, but thirty four hits and we have not been recording that show that long. I mean, so why are we going to talk about again? Because there was a report for the European Parliament and that's the one that I was talking about that came out at the end of May and had proposed some provisions to grant personhood to robots electronic personhood d yeah, among

other things. That's electronic personhood is probably the element that I think has had the most conversation around it after this report came out. Yeah, because it's kind of the flashiest one and it's it's sort of the most far reaching part of the report, but a lot of the report is actually very grounded and down to earth and and I I love it, like I love a lot of the ideas in here. So yeah, we were really excited about talking, uh with with with ourselves and to

you guys. I was about to say with you guys, but I guess you can't practice. I mean, they can talk back. We just we're not ignoring you. We just literally cannot hear you. Wait was oh no, that's no, he's eating something crunchy at any rate. So we wanted to really kind of boil down what was in this report because there's a lot more to it than just the electronic personhood. Like you were saying, Lauren, that gets a lot of attention because it almost it's like saying,

would you give your vacuum cleaner rights. We've we've had these discussions here on this show. The cool thing is at the end of those discussions we always like, you know, we really need to talk about this. Yeah, it would be wonderful if elected officials would begin considering this sort of thing. And it's happening. It's crazy, alright. So the report came out sixteen We should also say it's a draft report, or at least that's how it's titled. Yeah,

it's a proposal. Yeah, it's called draft Report with Recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics. The capacity to make even very exciting things sound very dull. I mean, how Yeah, there's gotta be a rule somewhere that if you are proposed something, or you've created a report, that the the title must be one of two things.

It must either be excessively long and with at least right and and by being excessively long, you have already told somebody everything they need to know about what's in the report. Or it has to incorporate a stupid acronym that has been tortured so that it can encompass the various concepts that are in the report. And if you're lucky, you get both. Yeah. So the thing about this report,

it had some awesome stuff in it. So, first of all, the general purpose of the proposal is to start those official discussions into developing policies and guidelines in the field of robotics, particularly since individual member states in the European Union are developing their own policies over time. So the fear is that you're gonna get all these different countries making their individual rules, and then you're gonna have conf x between the way one country legislates robotics and the

way another one does. And especially in the European Union, where everyone is working together very closely and literally working in other countries than the one of their own origin, it gets really important, really quickly to have agreement in

all of exactlyly. Yeah, if you if you got your training and your experience in one country in the European Union, and you are working in the robotics field in some capacity, and then you take an opportunity in a different country in the European Union, which is perfectly legitimate, you might find yourself struggling because these different number states have different rules. This is a proposal to make more of an umbrella of rules so that it's kind of an even playing

ground throughout the entire European Union. Now, to tell you how cool this report is in many ways, the introduction of the proposal at the very beginning section A. Under introduction they reference Mary Shelley's Frankenstein the Pygmalion myth. They all so I didn't put in the notes They also mentioned the progue golem, They mentioned catal Copex. Are you are or Rossum's universal Robots from where the term robot originates? Yes, Yes,

that's where it was coined. Ye. And it's already ten times more awesome than any government proposal I've ever read, because you've got all these things in the introduction talking about throughout our our history, we have created fiction that talks about our our desire to create a synthetic form of life, or at least intelligence. In their case, they were talking about intelligent machines, although I would argue Frankenstein's

monster is not really a machine. It's an artificial Yeah, I guess so, I mean on the same level that any human is a machine. Um. Now, section B that each of these sections, by the way, it's like a

paragraph under the introduction. But Section B of the introduction posits that were on the threshold of a new industrial revolution that is powered by artificial intelligence, and that part of society will remain unaffected by this revolution, and so it's wise to consider the implications now again, which is what we say basically at the end of every single podcast that we do about robots, right, and particularly ones about the idea of you know, will automation UH ultimately

take more jobs than it creates? How are we going to deal with that? That's really what that paragraph is getting at, saying, look, we can't even fully anticipate the consequences of this. We know what's happening. We know that robotics and artificial intelligence, machine learning, automation, all of these things are going to lead to a crazy amount of change on par with the industrial revolution of the past.

We need to start talking about that in an official capacity, not just like thought experiments, but actually, like, let's lay down some guidelines so that we don't mess things up too much. Yeah, and and by by way of kind of providing proof of that, it points out that robots

sales have been increasing exactly. Yeah, they're saying the robots sales been on the rise, especially in UH areas like car manufacture, automotive industry, the auto nation, in the automotive industry has really been on the rise, as well as just an electronics in general. And also states that robots will provide numerous benefits in the short to medium term, with a potential for quote virtually unbounded prosperity end quote

in the long term. That's a lovely phrase. Yeah, it's kind of like the Star Trek belief where you know, you've got like everything on demand all the time because of this wondrous world. It's probably not going to quite that extent because, as we have talked about in the past, to get to that Star Trek future, we'd also have to find like some sort of crazy energy sources, and we don't have dilithium crystals yet, so not yet. Keep

keep digging, everyone, yep. So the flip side, however, because this isn't all about just sunshine and rose is here robotic roses now, they wanted to say, like, hey, we got to consider some of the possible bad things about this. They say that these advances quote may result in a large part of the work now done by humans being taken over by robots end quote, and that that would affect not just employment, but also systems like social security,

which rely on employment taxes for funding. So, which is a thing that I had somehow never thought about before. But it is yeah, clear, I mean, once it's pointed out, it's like, of course, social security is a thing that we need to think about in this crazy future of robots.

Taken her jerbs. Exactly. If you if you are not having enough money paid into Social Security because so many jobs have been taken over by automated systems, then social Security itself can no longer perform the function it's meant to do. And you start to see a pretty precipitous decline in the quality of life for thousands millions of people right well, based on that current system. I mean, obviously if we had some thing like basic universal income,

then that would help. But see then you're all, how are you funding that? Exactly, Like if you don't, if you don't have people working, they can't make money and you can't tax them. I mean like they're not. Yeah you could, but they just have even less. I mean, like, I have these fingernail clippings, what do you want. I've got some like old newspapers and the garage I can give you. I mean I was saving them for some reason.

But yeah, it's just it's and so again, this this proposal is saying, look, we're acknowledging that these issues are right on the cusp of happening today. We need to start seriously talking about it, right and furthermore, on this kind of social issue, side. You know what happens when a robot breaks the thing, including a person. We need we need some legal recourse for figuring that out exactly, and we need to be able to assign liability in

those issues we need. We need to also understand how do robots and humans interact in a way that is a positive experience for humans? Uh, Sometimes that means creating an experience that appears to be a positive experience for robots, because even though at this stage, I would argue robots can't appreciate a person being polite to a robot for example, right the robot don't care? Yeah, it doesn't. It lacks the capacity. We have not programmed it to love as

of yet, but or to feel slighted. Sometimes by creating a system that encourages people to behave in a way towards robots that they would toward another human being a positive way, I would yes, that actually has a benefit

on the person. Right. Like, Like, we've seen some interesting studies about when you create responses and robots so that they seem to understand when they get something right or get something wrong, and they seem to have an action, people are feeling more receptive towards those robots and work

more easily with those robots. And so again, while it may not have a direct benefit to the robot in any you know, psychological way, it has a benefit on us as we interact with those robots, which is it's one of those things that you don't necessarily think about

when you start talking about policies. Uh. Also, they say, hey, what happens, um if robots like get super smart, like like way more like more than human smart smart like like like not just human smart smart, but they're also autonomous so that they can act on that smart smart. They don't necessarily need to be conscious or self aware, just really really intelligent. And so essentially they're saying, we need to think about the possibility of robots becoming a

danger to the human species. I don't let's not create a butt that's gonna kill us. Let's not skynet this thing, let's know not that. Yeah, let's do the opposite of that. Well maybe not the opposite, but the different option at least. So considering all of those things, the introduction concludes, the European Union should really get off its stuff and start talking about these ideas and work on a strategy to avoid problems in the future. So that's just the introduction. Yeah,

it's just laying everything out there for you. And then what they do later on in the report is kind of laid down general principles and some guidelines that they would suggest, But those guidelines are very general. We're you're going to hear the same thing throughout the rest of this podcast where they say we need to form a

committee specifically to set this up. Yeah, that this entire proposal is like is like one of those meetings that you're just sitting there and planning more meetings for the future, right right, and then eventually you later on down the road hold a meeting to discuss how you can have fewer meetings and that's when everyone loses their mind and run screaming from the room. But right now, where at a stage where they they are saying like, hey, we

don't have all the answers. This this document is not meant to because he's not an answer. This is just a suggestion for how we might come up with the exactly this isn't this isn't that that guide you would find in Beetlejuice about how to uh, you know, how how to work would they recently diseased I'm sorry deceased jokers in the movie anyway. So the next section is

titled General Principles. Are at the beginning of it as general Principles and the reports sites Asimov's Laws of Robotics, because of course they do seek reference number like eighteen. Again it's pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah, so if you are if you are rusty on Asimov's Laws of robotics, they are first, a robot may not harm a human or through inaction, allow a human to come to harm. Second, a robot must obey and the order is given by

a human unless it would violate the first law. A robot must protect itself from harm unless doing so would conflict with either of the first two laws. A fourth and or zero with depending on how you choose, because it was added a little bit later, A robot may not harm humanity or by an action, allow humanity to come to harm. Now, these are not innate laws, right

there's These are just good ideas. These were good ideas that a science fiction author came up with for the purposes of creating interesting narratives that would show how even these very basic ideas could sometimes have consequences. Yeah, that you didn't anticipate, but we generally since then have said those laws of robotics seem like a really good idea that lets kind of lay it out just how we

want it. Yeah, if you've got a big old metal thing that weighs like a half ton and it can move around and whack stuff, let's try and make sure it doesn't whack people. Yeah, preferably so. Uh, then we get the liability section talking about whacking people. This is it, This is what this is about, right, Like, how do we determine who is or what is liable in this in very scenarios? And this relates very closely to that podcast we did in the past about what happens if

a robot breaks the law. So we get to a point where this is where the report first suggests that the European Union might need to classify robots under a new category, either like a category like persons, like essentially, say, can we treat robots like people in the sense of liability like legally speaking, legally speaking, or would it be

more like animals would be more like objects? Or do we need to create an entirely new classification for an intelligent non human entity, right right, something that can behave at least semi autonomously, and something harder than a dolphin less bound to the sea. Yes. So, first thing they point out is that AI and machine learning are transforming

how robots interact with environments. And we wouldn't necessarily call even the most advanced AI that we have operating today in a thin close to being conscious or self aware, but that almost doesn't really matter, right, It could still be active in a way that could potentially be harmful. And we're seeing more applications that allow machines to learn from their environments and adapt their approaches to complete certain tasks.

That complicates that the whole autonomous part that makes robots useful. Yeah, and the idea that you know, since we've been seeing machine learning like go from observing a pendulum and determining what the laws of physics must be based upon those movements up to the you know, learning what a cat is based upon just feeding it information, you know, and and then getting to a point where we can maybe create an artificial intelligence, set it in a room, give

it a task, and have it learned from its mistakes so that it eventually begins to do that task more and more efficiently. That's that's creating something very different from just this machine will follow a specific set of instructions and repeat it exactly every time until it breaks. Right, And because right now, the way that robots work, take a take a roomba for example, nice easy, nice easy

thing that you may or may not have interacted with. Uh, right now, if a roomba trips and trips you and you die, Um, you sue you see the company, You see I robot? Yes, I think so, yeah, exactly believe it is I robot. So that would be that that's

exactly the case. Because robots right now, for the most part, are essentially machines that do a very specific task, and they do it pretty much the same way every time, even with something like the roombo which has some object avoidance and some other little bit of learning for for mapping purposes. But but it's very basic, right, It's not like it's not like the room but suddenly going to vacuum in a totally different way. Right, it can't. It

lacks that capability. But at this point we would say, all right, well, if the if the machine were to cause harm through its uh, it's normal operations, You would essentially say the manufacturer, the producer of that. Maybe the programmer is liable, right, But that gets more complicated as you get into these these devices that have machine learning

and autonomy. Yeah. Yeah, because if it's learning how to do new stuff, if if it's interacting within environment that the programmer didn't account for and therefore learns something harmful, then do you blame the manufacturer? They actually the report actually says that the more it learns, the less you can really blame the creator, right that that it's behaviors that's learning are due to whatever environment and variables it's encountering.

And it may very well be that if you were to trace that behavior all the way back down to the gem, the germ of an idea, the nugget of programming that eventually evolved into that behavior, it would be very difficult to say, well, this is clearly the fall of manufacturer, which means that maybe the robot itself has to be liable, which raise as questions like, well, how how do you deal with that? You've got to lie bad robot, I mean, the robot can't think or feel.

You can't punish the I mean, if you punish the robot. It would be meaningless, right, Like, the robot can't feel badly about it. It It can't learn from that experience. It can't be like, Wow, it put me in solitary and now I'm I'm gonna really turn things around. Yeah, I mean, you're not gonna get like a robot shoshank redemption thing going. I mean, it's it's really it's really shady whether or not humans are penitent by being put in penitentiary here. That is an episode I want to do, yes and

upsetting episode. Probably a lot of not shouting at each other, but shouting just into the void. Yeah, a lot of that. But at any rdy getting back to the robots, so we they the report says, we need to perhaps come up with some uh definitions so that we can figure out ways to assign liability in those cases where machines

are having this level of artificial intelligence and autonomy. Yeah, and it furthermore proposes to to create a system of registration for robots that are so advanced this could become a problem. Yeah. This is like almost like saying, you know, the way you might have to register a weapon, The idea that you know, at a robot there's a sufficient level of intelligence also carries with it a certain amount of risk towards humans, and that intelligence may not necessarily

come in the form of physical violence. It could come into form of sharing your information in a way that you had not anticipated, or perhaps uh spying in the

sense of like a video surveillance type of issue. So there the draft says, maybe we need to have a registration system, and once in a robot reaches a certain threshold, whether it's a threshold in artificial intelligence or just the various features in the robot, at that point, the producer must register the robot so that there is a government

document connected with that specific entity. In the case that that entity goes robo berserk, or does a make some mistake, or operates in a way that was unintended but causes harm in any of those scenarios, you've gotta have a

way to assign that liability. So this would again fall into into that category, right, And then in order to kind of assist with that, it calls for more funding for research projects, particularly the ones that that are are looking into these social and ethical challenges that are that are raised by these kinds of advancement, right, because the report recognized they said, hey, we realize this is not this is new. It's going to require experts and and

it's going to require funding. It's going to require money. So we need to actually seriously talk about this, not just say like, hey, let's throw ideas around, but let's let's create specific entities, and those entities have the responsibility of really seriously tackling these issues and coming up with guidelines that are uh, that are aligned with those ideas. Um and that the European Union should create quote legislative instruments on legal questions related to the development of robotics

and AI end quote that looks ahead ten to fifteen years. Yeah, hard to do. That's nuts. We love to to speculate about the future. Obviously, that's what this podcast is all about. That's literally what we do here. Yes, um, but I mean, but we also make so many jokes about forty years and also, wow, gosh, I keep forgetting how awesome that little jingle is. Also what we say, does it become law? Right?

And thank goodness for that, Jonathan, no joke. I mean when we get that that acts of destiny swinging around, you want that stuff to Sometimes we're whimsical, and by whimsical I also mean capricious to a level that's probably irresponsible. Anyway, the last time I took a test, I came out chaotic neutral. Yeah, that's terrifying. Chaotic neutral is the scariest of the alignments, isn't it? Fine? I mean chaotic evil. At least you know that whatever they're gonna do, it's

gonna be bad kadock neutral. It's just like I'm gonna close my eyes and throw a dart. Will I hit a board? Maybe? Um? So. The interesting thing here though, again is that they want to look at creating again a specific official entity that is dedicated to answering legal questions and speculating about what questions will need to be

answered more than a decade out. So saying, let's not wait until we've reached a technical, technological level of sophistication where we then have to backtrack and figure out a way to litigate around issues. Yeah. See, let's proactively get out there and be looking for the most cutting edge, the most ridiculous even um possibilities that could come up in the future, and let's plan just a little bit

for those. Yeah. And it's so different from the way we've seen the law and technology interact in the past, Right, Typically, we see technological advancement leap way ahead of technology and then we have this incredibly Yeah, and it tends to be messy and kind of embarrassing if we're being real honest. Yeah, I mean, just look at the Internet and telecommunications here in the States. I mean, that's been a huge pain in the butt and that has led to big arguments

about net neutrality. And so what this draft proposal is saying is that they want to avoid having as many of those scenarios as possible by proactively thinking of ahead. It's just I don't know how they're gonna do it in a way that it may very well mean that they create policies that are covering a specific pathway, and as we see technology take a different pathway, they'll just have to switch gears. Uh. It's a it's a challenging thing. I'm sure it would be a very frustrating thing in

many ways, but it's also really important. Um So, the draft proposal also calls for a legal solution that doesn't restrict the type or extent of damage as a person can seek based solely on the fact that the damage that was caused came from a non human agent. In other words, you should never have a situation where a court tells you, well, we can only award you x number of dollars or euro in this case because your mugger was a robot, So there shouldn't be a specific

limit just because of the robot being the cause. Yeah, I mean also like, don't create a mugging robot, y'all. But yeah, I mean, let's that's going down the futurama path, which, while entertaining, is really not practical. No hobobots, no orphan bots, come on. Just but but but joking aside, I mean, we're already seeing a need for this, uh in cases for example, like like the recent and tragic depth that resulted from a Tesla car crash just a couple of

weeks ago. Um, the driver had had his Tesla car in autopilot mode, which is not in fact autopilot but rather a driver assist kind of function. Yeah, I have multiple times over the last week yelled that we maybe need to change the name of that feature, that it is inherently misleading. But but right, I mean, you know, in this case where where it's driver was in the car,

the car was in driver assist mode. Uh, neither the driver nor the computer in the car recognized that a semitruck that was crossing his path was there because of just glare conditions, or maybe the dude was looking away. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, we we don't have I don't think all the details will ever be available because we just don't know what was happening at that moment.

But as as you're pointing out, like, this is an issue where there's the question who ultimately is liable in this case, and without having the legislation there to kind of create that, it means that it means that the courts have to start figuring it out on their own, and that's a rough way to make legislation. Um. So, moving on with the liability section. They also suggest that the producers of a robot are liable for damage on a level proportionate with the amount of instructions the producers

gave the robot. This is the part that I find really fascinating. Yeah, so this this would be like the more simple your robot, the more liable the producers are for any damage the robot creates. Yeah, if you get

crushed by a dumb robot. It's it's the manufacturer's fault, right, because they're the ones who like, if the robot can only follow instructions that were created by the manufacturer, and through the operation the robot has hurt someone, than the manufacturer would be considered liable, assuming that you're not having a situation where a person has flagrantly ignored warnings or safety features, like in a big automation thing, there's usually

rails and all this other stuff separating the robot from people. Do not walk into the clamp function of the robot exactly kind of in those cases, you would you could argue that, well, the person who was hurt was at fault, but they're talking about in other in other situations where there was an unintended consequence in the normal operation of the robot. However, the more the robot acts as an autonomous entity, the lower the responsibility of the producers of

the robot. So if a robot damage is property or hurts someone through an an autonomous decision that was not directly traced to its fundamental programming. In other words, this was some sort of learned behavior that went awry, the robot ends up being liable not the producers of the robot, which is a pretty radical idea. They also say that the longer a robot has received quote unquote education, the more liable the robot's unquote teacher is for any damage

the robot causes. So, in other words, if you have the robot in a lab setting and you're training it in the lab, and you're training it over and over again with lots of different ways, and then you put you implement the robot somewhere and it hurts somebody, you could say, well, the teacher was the one training the behaviors. Yeah, that the manufacturer didn't do it this. This person trained

this robot to do this. So yeah, yeah, So if you get crushed by a dumb robot, it's the manufacturer's fault. If you get crushed by a smart robot, it's either the robot's fault or your own faulty. And so what do you do in that case? Like, all right, well now we know who's fault it is. What then? Well,

the report has some suggestions for that. They said, what about an obligatory insurance scheme similar to that that you would have to have if you wanted to operate a car, except in this case, the people making the robots are the ones paying the insurance, which which I'm not sure how I feel about. I'm I don't know. Yeah, it's weird because in this case you wouldn't say, like going with the Carmen before, would be like saying, well, the car manufacturer, the automaker has to pay for my car

insurance and an idea which I love. Now, if it were an autonomous car, you might say, well, that makes sense because I'm not the one controlling the vehicle. If it's a it's a car that's under my control. However, you could argue, well, it's the driver's behaviors, unless you're talking about a faulty vehicle, in which case there could

be a recall or something like that. So they're saying no, the producers would pay out the insurance for the robots they create, and if the robot were to cause any damage, then that insurance would end up paying for that damage. Or there could be a compensation fund for the robots themselves, uh yeah, to pay them for all of their hard work, so they'll feel greater job satisfaction, right and be able

to buy the good oil, right exactly. Finally, they won't be they won't be sledging through like the used fry grease over at the fast food restaurant. They'll finally be able to go in and order a pint of w D forty or something. No, no, this is this is not to make the robots feel better about the job

they are doing. And actually it's an interesting and practical solution to this issue, saying, let's have a compensation fund for each individual robot, not so that the robot has spending money, but so that if the robot were to cause harm, then there's actually money that belongs to the robot that could be paid out to the person who's injured or there or whoever owns the property that was damaged in the case of that sort of thing. Uh, And that the robot itself is paying for thee although

ultimately it's whoever's compensating the robot. But but this is this is a way of saying like, well, you wouldn't go after the business necessarily if the robot itself had the funds and its compensation fund, and that you would even possibly invest money on behalf of the robot, which is so robot would hapen its own four oh one

K or something. It's weird, right, yeah, yeah, and and and that that's the point in the proposal at which it says again like like really though, we're going to probably need a different legal distinction for romance at this level, um than just yeah. And and they also say that the compensation fund is just it's a possible solution. They're not even saying, like we're saying, this has got to

be the way. They first start with the idea of the insurance, then they move on to possible compensation fund, but they admit like this is just the sort of brainstorming ideas we have and something that would need to

go into further discussion with an actual committee. Um. And then we move on to the next section, which is all about ethical principles, and it calls for the design of an ethical framework to make certain that advances in robotics are made with considerations to the impact on human safety, privacy or privacy, integrity, dignity, autonomy, and data ownership. So which which is a really good spread. I'm proud of them for for putting privacy and data ownership and stuff

like that. I'm there too, really impressed. I was consistently impressed by this report at seeing the scope that they were taking, because they it was so far beyond just simple ideas like they're taking our gerbs, or or robots are big and scary and can smash my face in or things like, you know, the stuff that we typically talk about. They went well beyond that. I mean, they covered those items too, but that was kind of cool.

They go on to say that the risk of harm to a person should be no greater than that encountered in ordinary life. So, in other words, in the future that's filled with robots and all sorts of roles in the job, social robots, care robots, whatever they may be, a person should encounter no more risk than they do right now in an ordinary day. So it should Robots should not make the world riskier in the words, um, which is really what we're hoping for. Yes, I mean

to decrease the risk would be awesome. I mean, but I mean at least don't make it worse. So I love this. I love this idea, Like, well, like, look, we just we know how humans are. Can we can we establish a baseline of suck exactly? Like? Can we make it not suck more? If we open up any history book we see our propensity for making things way worse early on in the development of any given technology. We think it'd be awesome if we didn't do that

this time. Uh So to do all of this, you know, they admit like this is a lot to talk about. They say that there must be a new European agency specifically dedicated to the field of robotics and artificial intelligence, and that it has to be funded properly. It can't just be an agency in name, and it needs to be staffed with technical experts as well as leaders in coal and regulatory fields. So they're saying, like, we need

we need smart people. Yeah, we need people who understand the technology, who understand the hypotheticals about the technology, and also people who understand the law and understand how not to be dicks to people exactly. Yeah, I mean this

is this is not a small thing. This is you know, Yes, you need engineers, you need the people who know how to solve a problem, but you also need the ethical experts who can say, look, just because this is the most efficient way to solve the problem doesn't mean it's the right way, right, especially when you have a world that also happens to have human beings in it, which which fingers crossed again, like, yeah, you know, I'd like the future to have I suppose, yeah, at least a couple, right,

I mean, you know, I need I need a couple of folks to watch my videos and listen to my podcast. Otherwise what am I going to do? Right? And then it and then it goes into a bunch of specific sections about different different about more committees and about more government and more things to think about. So and well we'll cover these in brief. So one of them is about intellectual property, which they want to find a way

to both protect and encourage innovation. So it's kind of like, you know, the idea of patents, the idea that they protect an idea, but they also allow people to see what the idea is, and then once the patent expires, they can also use that as the jumping off point for new inventions that kind of stuff. Right, and not only in terms of making robots, but in terms of what robots make. This is the really again, something I wouldn't have necessarily thought government report would include in it.

But yeah, they say, what about works that robots make? Like let's say a robot writes a song. For example. We've talked about this in the past about robots and their role in art and what is art? And can a robot make art? Yeah, and so their their need to be laws in place for what happens when that happens, because it is happening right now. Yeah. Who owns the copyright to the music of robot creates? Is it the manufacturer?

Is it the person who owns the robot? Uh? Is it whomever gave Does the robot have ownership of that? That art and the money it makes go back into that like exactly right, Like wow, our Paul McCartney bought went Insane and slaughtered fourteen people. Thank goodness it wrote that hit song five years back. Because we can afford to pay off all the legal fees. We laugh or we cry, don't don't do that. It was the first name that popped in my head. Uh. And to be fair,

I mean, come on, he's he's part robot too. So uh, if if this in fact happens, how do we assign that ownership? And again they don't have the answer for it. They're just saying, this is a question that we need to answer. So we need to bring it up and say This might seem frivolous, but it's absolutely something that is happening, and so we have to come up with

our legal answer for it. Yeah. This next one is one that I'm all, I'm so excited about standardization, and I feel like such a boring adult is excited about standardization. But we've we've covered like home automation right home automation. One of the problems is that if you don't want all your stuff to come from the same company, how do you make sure that stuff can communicate with each other so you actually get that automated experience that you wanted,

right or or autonomous vehicles. I think this is one of the biggest hurdles that we're facing right now to autonomous vehicles is how do we create a system where all of those vehicles from different manufacturers can talk to each other, talk to the road, talk to the traffic signals, et cetera. Yeah, where you can have that that fully integrated system where cars are fully they know where everyone is,

they know where all the other other cars are. Not only do they know where the other cars are, they know what the other cars are going to do before it starts to happen because they can communicate with one another. Well, without those standards in place, you end up with a lot of proprietary systems where all the vehicles made by one company can talk to each other, but that only represents called shoulder to those other cars. Yeah, and there they represent a tiny percentage of all the vehicles on

the road. You don't really get a very you don't have an integrated system in that approach. And so they're saying, well, we don't want to see that with this future of robotics, So let's start creating some standards that companies can follow when they're designing their products so that we avoid this in the future and we have a more seamless integration UM.

And in fact, they have another section on autonomous vehicles themselves, and they specifically call out for standards for those autonomous vehicles. They also mentioned care robots and medical robots. UM. They're specifically in those cases talking about a need to develop robots that where you're you're specifically thinking about how are

these going to affect humans? Right right, and and just kind of I think it was a call for like like research and development into, uh, how we can create robots that can help with with care of the sick, or the elderly, or you know whatever whatever group it is.

That and how can we create robots that are providing care not just physical services, and and to make sure it still maintains a sense of human dignity as well, like not just that they are effective in doing what they do, but they are they perform their their duties in such a way that the person who's being cared for doesn't feel less less for that. Yeah, and again, being someone who currently and thankfully is healthy and able bodied,

it is a weird. It hadn't occurred to me. I'm not I'm so privileged in the place where I am in my life, it didn't even occur to me. And I am so thankful to see that they're smart people talking about this. Um. They also get into human repair

and enhancement. Enhancement, you say, yeah, so not just like, Okay, while we've developed this technology that is an artificial heart or an artificial kidney or an artificial liver or whatever this is getting into when we developed technology that could actually create, yeah, an upgrade to a human being without prior injury, right, like like not like this arm is defective, I need I need a new one, but like, no,

this arm is less cool than the robot arm. My risk can't turn degree, so it's really a pain in the butt to put a light bulb back into a socket. Yeah, I just want to have one where I can spend the risk in that ways and I'm done. Uh So

they're saying, well, hey, this is gonna happen. Maybe we need to start thinking about the ethics involved in this and actually get experts in hospitals and other healthcare institutions who are thinking about these kind of issues and start to work on legislation for that as well, so that we don't enter into a an environment where people are just willy nearly getting crazy upgrades. Maybe they're putting their own lives in danger as a result, maybe they're creating

a bigger divide between the haves and have nots. They don't want to do that, So that's what that section is specifically about. Oh and they also have a little section about drones and that bit, but I'm not going to cover it because it's essentially the kind of stuff you would imagine, like common sense things like privacy and security, that sort of. So then they get into the discussion

about the impact on jobs and social systems. This is probably the section that got the most attention in the media about the idea of personhood, and it's kind of also like the most immediate impact or issue. Yeah, because we don't have robots at the level of artificial intelligence and autonomy in the general sphere that we have to

worry about that right now. I mean, thinking about now is good, but it's not like they're already out there right The most advanced ones are in pretty secluded environments for very specific research projects. It's not like you're gonna encounter one as you walk down the street unless there's been a terrible miss have Paul McCartney, Bob I was

thinking either that or it's Johnny five from Short Circuit. So, according to one forecast that the reports cited, the EU could face a shortage of as many as eight D twenty five thousand Information and Communications technology professionals or i c T professionals. And on top of that, it predicts that of all jobs by will require some level of

digital skills. So the proposal calls for a revision of a digital competence framework so that they can at least help young people and really people of all ages developed those basic skills so that they maintain a viable place

in the workforce. Um. They also call for designing programs to encourage more young women into the fields of robotics and the related fields, related technical fields, and they say that the European Union and the member states within it should launch initiatives in order to support women in I c T and to boost their E skills, which is

pretty awesome. Essentially, this is a cultural shift, saying, guys, let's stop sending a message that these are fields primarily for dudes, right, because they weren't originally and and it's ridiculous that they are today. Then that there are people who are absolutely instrumental in the development of computer science who happened to be women. Uh, I mean like you you know, you've got a Lovelace who created the first freaking computer programs, and you've got you've got the the

woman who does who came up with the coin computer bug. Like, uh, there there contributions to computer science and to information and communications technologies have been phenomenal, But in general, we've created

a culture. And when by we, I mean like everywhere, not the two of us in this no, not I have tried not to perpetuate, yes, but there's been a culture that has discouraged women into going into those fields to the point where men who are in the field may have like they may feel like what what are you? What are you even here for? Like would they see a woman come into like an engineering class. And that

absolutely needs to change for multiple reasons. And uh so they're saying, let's get on that, let's create programs and change this perception that is based on fallacy so that we get brilliance that were otherwise missing out on them. So again it goes well beyond just the idea of

robots in that case, also very inspiring. So they also call for a system to monitor job trends to see where jobs are disappearing due to robots and automation, as well as where are jobs being created because of robotics. So essentially saying, well, we want to make sure to steer people further away from these jobs that are increasingly being taken by robots, but we definitely need more people in these other areas that that are the opportunities have

opened up because helping shape education and training. Yeah, and this is a this kind of goes in line with what we were talking about when when we visited Georgia Tech and chatted about, you know, the idea of will robots take our jobs? And the answer is no, there are gonna be other jobs. But there's the practical consideration of, well, how do we how do we one identify what those jobs are and to make sure that people are getting the education and experience necessary to to do those jobs.

It's easy to say, oh, well, now we've got all these more awesome jobs available, It's a lot harder to practically get people in the right place. Yeah, So this is proactively thinking about that. And here's a really big one that that is the gem of the draft as

far as most people are concerned. Perhaps the European Union should quote introduce corporate reporting requirements on the extent and purport of the contribution of robotics and AI to the economic results of a company for the purposes of taxation and social security contributions end quote. So the idea that hey, if you're a company and you have replaced your human employees with robots, uh, maybe you have to pay a

certain amount. Yeah, maybe those robots are employees and you have to pay social security taxes for each of your robot employees, which sounds crazy because you're thinking like, well, robots are never going to collect on social security. But you get back to that question fund Yeah, exactly. If if you get to a point where the Social Security is being defunded due to the robots taking over more and more jobs, you still have the need for social security,

but you don't have the money for social security. This is a kind of a temporary solution because obviously this can't be supportable long term. As more and more things get automated, there becomes less of a need for money in the first place. But until that happens, right right, Yeah, there's there's an event horizon past which none of this

is important anymore. That's that star trek and then we're a minute away from it, um and and it does actually call out specifically like hey, maybe really we should all be thinking about a basic universal income. Yeah, they say that every model state in the European Union should really seriously consider that that. It may not be the right or it may not be the same approach for every single nation in the European Union, but it very

well may be a conversation that should start to happen. Uh. Fortunately, we do have nations that are debating on using this at least in test cases or perhaps rolling out throughout an entire country where we can look and see what happens, and if it ends up being a massive failure, we'll say, okay, don't do that. But we still need a solution to this problem, perhaps some other solution. Yeah. Yeah. And then the last big section in the proposal is licenses. Yeah.

Now they don't actually have like a specific you know, you got to go and fill out Form A three seventeen and get your robot license. They're laying out something some basic rules guidelines they think that should be included for licenses. And they have two different sets, one for designers for robot producers, and one for users. And I'm not gonna list all of them because it's they're fairly extensive for both. Yeah, but but some okay, Yeah, they had a lot of really fun and interesting ideas of

just suggestions of how you should go about robot ing. Yeah. One step one one of the ones under designers is let's have to kill switch on robots, like you know, like a like a like just turn it off if it just flop. Yeah, so if it starts going Paul McCartney crazy, you know, buts going and say you just and then like it just switches to wings mode or something, it turns off. Make sure your robot is going to operate in a legal way, So don't don't make your

burglar bot or mugger bot. As we mentioned earlier, this again for licenses for designers, be transparent in the way the robot is programmed, as well as the predictability of robotic behavior. In other words, maybe don't call it out a pilot. Yeah, it might be a really good choice to start off with. The idea being that, you know, if you are being sincere and honest in the way that your robot was designed and and what it is supposed to do, you reduce the likelihood of some unintended

consequence for their down the road. Yeah. I think of this part almost like the FDA guidelines for how you can market food on food packaging, um, and and just you know, yeah, like like just be up and honest with people and then they'll be able to make better decisions and right right, yeah, and you know, and and that way you avoid a huge class action lawsuit for

their down the line. Everyone's happy, Um, they say that the developers should design tracing tools during the development stages of robots so that when a robot behaves in aticular way, it could be traced back to the design of the robot itself. So in other words, it's it's kind of like a uh, like a tracer bullet in a way, you see the pathway that you can trace back. So when it exhibits a specific behavior, you find out why it behaved that way in that situation. And this could

be good or bad. It could be that you want to find out, all right, well that was interesting. We didn't anticipate that the robot was going to behave that way, but it was beneficial, So let's find out what happened. Out what happened. Or it could be that the robot behaved in a way that would cause damage or harm to someone, and then you want to find out why did it get to the root of that problem. You never programmed my bot to bash someone over the head. Furthermore,

it does also specifically say don't make humanoid robot. It was not so much hid but but human like make it clear that they're robots. Yeah, that's the most interesting part about the little license to developers to be too. It's like, make sure your robots are easily identifiable as robots. Don't make robots that people will think are people or animals, I guess. Or no replicants, no uh reboot, Battlestar Galactic

A cylons, none of that, I guess. I guess. Really it gets down to everything, like, you wouldn't want a robot that's designed to look exactly like a tree, for example, but the tree is really a surveillance machine that's just constantly recording audio and video. Because if you just see a tree and you can't identify as a robot, you

don't know that you're being you know, watched surveilled. Now if you're in the UK, which not part of the European Union anymore, but you know you're being under surveillance all the time. Anyway, I'm unduly upset about the idea of a robotic surveillance tree. Yeah, I mean it. The first thing we think of is don't make robots a little like people. But really it's saying don't make robots

that don't look like robots. That doesn't necessarily mean they you know, like the robot just has to be identifiable a robot. It could be in humanoid in shape, or it could just be like a bucket with wheels on it. But you know that it's a robot, right, it doesn't look like something else. Um, I love our future of bucket robots. Yes, that's actually I'm I'm referencing an actual

robot that's haating the streets of London right now. It looks like a bucket with six wheels, but it has a lid and it's meant to deliver small packages with it within two or three miles. All right, I take back my my ribbing about bucket robots. I mean, you know, I guess you could call it looks kind of like a box with wheels. I said bucket because it's got curved edges as opposed to rectangular like like part ninety degree angles. But yeah, bucket bots are a thing man

onto the users. So they also had several I've only picked three of them. One of them is that uh, respect human physical and emotional frailty. So don't make your robot do your bullying for you. Don't set your robot to make someone feel badly about themselves or shake them down for or milk money, you know, being respectful of other human beings. Yeah, when you're using your robots, don't be mean to people, right, general rule of thumb for all the time, by the way, not just not just

when you're using your robots. Just don't people speaking of you should respect other people's privacy right not to use robots to spy on people. Right. So this is really relevant right now with drones that have high definition cameras mounted on them, the idea of you know, using a drone, don maybe look into someone's window or something. I mean

that this is specifically saying, hey, don't do that. Yeah. Well, and and furthermore, like even if it's a situation that crops up where you suddenly realize that you've got a robot in a room and it's inappropriate for whatever reason to have that robot doing surveillance, turn off the surveillance. And finally, don't weaponize your robot. I just don't do it.

Don't don't strap knives to your robots hands and just tell it to go wind melling around or you know, Paul McCartney needs no excuses to right, you just keep that robot under wraps. No, seriously, though, it's that that's one of the rules that they had keep in mind when I say rules, these are all proposals. Even if this were to be adopted, it would still just be a set of proposal. Yeah, it's not. It's not like it's a legally binding document um. So that gets to

some of the reaction to the proposal. Some critics are saying that setting up guidelines this early, particularly for stuff like the concept of electronic personhood, when we don't even have robots that are closed to being conscious, is more premature than not, and really that that being this premature could stifle development right in other in other words, like if you were to set up rules and regulations that say X is off limits, someone who is trying to innovate,

may end up not pursuing a path of innovation because they're afraid it's going to overlap on that restriction. And then the what the critics are saying is that means we get a much slower rate of progression when it comes to we get no Paul McCartney bought at all, Right, and think of the songs that we're going to miss out on from Paul McCartney bought that's going to be copyrighted in some way that we haven't determined. Yet they also point out that this proposal again is not legally

binding legislation. So some people are saying, hey, what's the point of this anyway. It's not like if if the European Parliament said this is a great idea, that anything would happen. That's not the point I would argue. I would argue that the draft report is meant to say, let's start the ball rolling and actually officially get some committees in place to start forming what will be legislation. Yeah, I get I get the argument, and in that it's saying, like,

stop making meetings to make more meetings. But but in this case it's necessary, especially since like we advocate all the time that we need to talk about this, and then we say, hey, why are you talking about that? That's crazy? But uh, finally we have that social security section that has people scratching their heads because on the face of it, it sounds like crazy talk to say, a robot is not a person. Why would you have a robot pay into social security? A robot is never

going to collect on social security. But when you look at that larger picture that we've mentioned a couple of times now, the idea of a social system that starts to fold in on itself through lack of funding, it starts to make a little more sense at least that you need to find a solution to that problem. Maybe having the robots essentially the owners of the robots paying

into social security on behalf of the robots. Maybe that ultimately doesn't make sense, but we definitely have to think about of a solution that does make sense because that problem is going to be there either way. So uh so, yeah, I mean, I'm I was so pleased to get to dig into this document and uh and so pleased again, Like I feel like I feel like I've said this like nine times already, but like, just good job you guys, y EU for getting this done. Yeah. I hope that

this leads to more official action. Yeah. Uh, it would be great to see someone take the lead in this space and say, I don't care if you guys think this is silly. We have to prepare or else we're going to be caught with our our digital pants down exactly. I was trying to come up with what adjective do I want to use for pants? Digital? Was perfect? Um, so we don't want that to happen. Let's let's get

ahead of it. And I think that this is a really interesting start, and I'm hopeful that it will continue and that despite the jokes and the pranks and the you know, the good natured like not so good natured jabs on Twitter, that we see progress because it's it's something that has to happen sooner or later, and that or other it happens sooner. Yeah, it will happen whether we like it or not. So let's let's be prepared.

But I'm curious to hear what you guys think. You know, give it, give it a read if you like it. It's twenty two pages long. Uh that includes the first two pages that have just like the little contents of stuff stuff, and then once you get into that, it's a super fast read. I promise you. You can even start skimming it in certain sections because they're reiterating stuff they've said, so you can really breathe through it in like a half hour easy. And that's if you're taking

time to make notes. I know because I've done it. Uh, So check it out. It's available online. You can actually get the PDF and read through the whole thing. And I want to hear what you guys have to think about that, like, do you have your own reaction to this? Are there certain things that you think are great ideas? Are you things that you feel are completely off off base, off track? Is there anything that you think that they

missed entirely? Yeah? And uh. Also, obviously, if you have suggestions for future episodes of forward thinking, you can send those to us as well. Our email address is FW thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or you can drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook at Twitter where FW thinking. If you go to Facebook and you search FW thinking in that little search bar, our profile should pop up and you can leave us on sit there. We'd like to hear from you, guys, and we will

talk to you again really soon. For more on this topic and the future of technology, visit forward Thinking dot Com Problem brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,