Symposium Next Week on “A Legal Theory for Autonomous Artificial Agents”
posted by Frank Pasquale
On February 14-16, we will host an online symposium on A Legal Theory for Autonomous Artificial Agents, by Samir Chopra and Laurence White. Given the great discussions at our previous symposiums for Tim Wu’s Master Switch and Jonathan Zittrain’s Future of the Internet, I’m sure this one will be a treat. Participants will include Ken Anderson, Ryan Calo, James Grimmelmann, Sonia Katyal, Ian Kerr, Andrea Matwyshyn, Deborah DeMott, Paul Ohm, Ugo Pagallo, Lawrence Solum, Ramesh Subramanian and Harry Surden. Chopra will be reading their posts and responding here, too. I discussed the book with Chopra and Grimmelmann in Brooklyn a few months ago, and I believe the audience found fascinating the many present and future scenarios raised in it. (If you’re interested in Google’s autonomous cars, drones, robots, or even the annoying little Microsoft paperclip guy, you’ll find something intriguing in the book.)
There is an introduction to the book below the fold. (Chapter 2 of the book was published in the Illinois Journal of Law, Technology and Policy, and can be found online at SSRN). We look forward to hosting the discussion!
Social and economic interactions today increasingly feature a new category of being: the artificial agent. It buys and sells goods; determines eligibility for legal entitlements like healthcare benefits; processes applications for visas and credit cards; collects, acquires and processes financial information; trades on stock markets; and so on. We use language inflected with intentions in describing our interactions with an artificial agent, as when we say “the shopping cart program wants to know my shipping address.” This being’s competence at settling into our lives, in taking on our tasks, leads us to attribute knowledge and motivations, and to delegate responsibility, to it. Its abilities, often approximating human ones and sometimes going beyond them, make it the object of fear and gratitude: it might spy on us, or it might relieve us of tedium and boredom.
The advances in the technical sophistication and autonomous functioning of these systems represent a logical continuation of our social adoption of technologies of automation. Agent programs represent just one end of a spectrum of technologies that automate human capacities and abilities, extend our cognitive apparatus, and become modeled enhancements of ourselves. More than ever before, it is coherent to speak of computer programs and hardware systems as agents working on our behalf. The spelling checker that corrects this page as it is written is a lexicographic agent that aids in our writing, as much an agent as the automated trading system of a major Wall Street brokerage, and the PR2 robot, a prototype personal robotic assistant (Markoff 2009). While some delegations of our work to such agents are the oft-promised ones of alleviating tedious labor, others are ethically problematic, as in robots taking on warfare roles (Singer 2009). Yet others enable a richer, wider set of social and economic interconnections in our networked society, especially evident in e-commerce (Papazoglu 2001).
As we increasingly interact with these artificial agents in unsupervised settings, with no human mediators, their seeming autonomy and increasingly sophisticated functionality and behavior, raises legal and philosophical questions. For as the number of interactions mediated by artificial agents increase, as they become actors in literal, metaphorical and legal senses, it is ever more important to understand, and do justice to, the artificial agent’s role within our networks of social, political and economic relations. What is the standing of these entities in our socio-legal framework? What is the legal status of the commercial transactions they enter into? What legal status should artificial agents have? Should they be mere things, tools, and instrumentalities? Do they have any rights, duties, obligations? What are the legal strategies to make room for these future residents of our polity and society? The increasing sophistication, use, and social embedding of computerized agents makes the coherent answering of older questions raised by mechanical automation ever more necessary.
Carving out a niche for a new category of legal actor is a task rich with legal and philosophical significance. The history of jurisprudence addressing doctrinal changes in the law suggests legal theorizing to accommodate artificial agents will inevitably find its pragmatic deliberations colored by philosophical musings over the nature and being of these agents. Conversely, the accommodation, within legal doctrines, of the artificial agent, will influence future philosophical theorizing about such agents, for such accommodation will invariably include conceptual and empirical assessments of their capacities and abilities. This interplay between law and philosophy is not new: philosophical debates on personhood, for instance, cannot proceed without an acknowledgement of the legal person, just as legal discussions on tort liability are grounded in a philosophical understanding of responsibility and causation.
This book seeks to advance interdisciplinary legal scholarship in answer to the conundrums posed by this new entity in our midst. Drawing upon both contemporary and classical legal and philosophical analysis, we attempt to develop a prescriptive legal theory to guide our interactions with artificial agents, whether as users or operators entering contracts, acquiring knowledge or causing harm through agents, or as persons to whom agents are capable of causing harm in their own right. We seek to apply and extend existing legal and philosophical theories of agency, knowledge attribution, liability, and personhood, to the many roles artificial agents can be expected to play and the legal challenges they will pose while so doing. We emphasize legal continuity, while seeking to refocus on deep existing questions in legal theory.
The artificial agent is here to stay; our task is to accommodate it in a manner that does justice to our interests and its abilities.
February 8, 2012 at 10:43 am
Tags: A Legal Theory for Autonomous Artificial Agents, artificial agents
Posted in: Contract Law & Beyond, Criminal Law, Current Events, Cyberlaw, Social Network Websites, Symposium (Autonomous Artificial Agents), Technology, Tort Law
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Responses (11)
A.J. Sutter - February 8, 2012 at 8:59 pm
Don’t characterizations and statements like “a new category of being,” “future residents of our polity and society” and “as they become actors in literal, metaphorical and legal senses” all beg the question? Why should it be a foregone conclusion that any of these characterizations is correct? Why would legal continuity not be served by ascribing legal responsibility to the humans and companies who design, deploy and/or hire these artificial “agents”?
BTW does the book address the question of how you can sue and recover from an AAA? Should it be able to open a bank account, own property? (If not, how to recover against them?) How you get personal jurisdiction over it, and serve it with a complaint? Can it hire lawyers, who can appear for it? Sign a valid conflict waiver? Can it sue me or another human being? How could you cross-examine one? Can it form mens rea? If so, how could it be punished? If an AAA could not be so autonomous in these roles, and would require some human stand-in (or corporate one, which in some capacities boils down to humans again) to achieve them, doesn’t that militate against the sci-fi fantasies in the ascription of autonomy to them?
If the book does indeed address all these issues, please mention it in reply; in that case maybe I’ll pop for it (if Amazon’s and my bank card’s software will let me).
Patrick S. O'Donnell - February 8, 2012 at 9:35 pm
My intuitive reaction is well captured by A.J.’s first paragraph above. I look forward to the discussion nonetheless.
Samir Chopra - February 9, 2012 at 8:21 am
AJ, Patrick: I don’t think statements like those beg the question at all. The contracting problem (as discussed in Chapter 2 and in the SSRN paper linked above) should show that attempts to shoehorn the agent into well-established legal categories increasingly run the risk of implausibility, when confronted by the actual functionality and method of deployment of existent agents. Are these agents just machines or tools like cars or hammers? Only if you insist on disregarding their actual modes of usage. As for them being “actors”, well, again, the ascription of agency is very much a contingent fact, dependent on what ends we want to realize (much like we pick out a book’s “author” as one person when the creative, productive forces that have gone into its writing are manifold). We can see agency everywhere, as the ancients did, or we can shrink it to just ourselves; it will come down the ends we are interested in realizing. Those statements you have seized on from the Introduction above are not foregone conclusions; the point of the book’s arguments is to show that our comfortable rejection of them should be subject to a little examination given how differently these agents function, and how much responsibility we are handing over to them.
As for the questions raised in the second paragraph, no, not all of those questions have been addressed (some have been with indications as to how they may be addressed; I will say briefly that analogies with corporate bodies work better than you might imagine; I think it’s a little too easy, incidentally, to say corporations are “just humans”).
Scholarship in this area is still in its infant stages; our book attempts to start with the simplest, most basic problem created by artificial agents, the problem of electronic contracting, and suggests an incremental approach, starting with legal agency without personality, then legal agency and considers the possibility of legal personality. There is no “sci-fi” ascription of autonomy, but we do point out that autonomy is not a binary concept. There is no such thing called “autonomy” that we human beings automatically have and other beings don’t. There is a spectrum along which we can mark out various positions, rather. Your questions presume we are arguing that artificial agents be made legal (or moral) persons or citizens or legal subjects will full rights; we do no such thing.
I look forward to discussing the book with you if you do decide to “pop for it.” I’m sure Amazon and your bank card’s software will be grateful for the business.
Patrick S. O'Donnell - February 9, 2012 at 9:15 am
Thanks for the clarification Samir. I’m happy to learn my intuitive (i.e., first, spontaneous, unreflective) reaction is off base. As a Kantian in many respects, I do rather prefer the moral and philosophical notion of “autonomy” to be used for human beings alone, but of course you’re free to proffer a stipulative or theoretical definition for our consideration. (Please don’t infer from this I think all non-human animals should be denied ‘legal’ personhood, as there are some creatures, like chimpanzees, bonobos, and dolphins, for instance, I believe should have such legal status). So while I’m happy to see some moral and legal boundaries between human and nonhuman animals blurred and crossed, I’m much more reluctant to see such a thing happen with technological products of any sort, while nonetheless recognizing the novel nature of the moral and legal issues we face owing to the technical capacities of robots, etc. As I say, I look forward to the discussion, and I hope with an open mind, in the sense of a willingness to seriously entertain the argument(s).
Patrick S. O'Donnell - February 9, 2012 at 9:56 am
I might have mentioned my concerns with regard to technology are owing to the fact that the current fascination with the neurosciences, some prominent theories within evolutionary psychology, as well as much literature in the philosophy of mind, among other cultural currents, tends toward a reductionism such that the brain is, or is like, a computer designed by natural selection to select information from the environment (the computer programs of the brain being on the order of adaptations), and with such “knowledge” of the (modular) computational architecture of the brain comes a systematic understanding (or enhanced capacity for same) of social and cultural phenomena, even, perhaps, consciousness itself! In short, these wildly speculative or implausible conceptions of human intentionality, consciousness, and “the mind,” add up to an equally implausible or “scientistic” conception of human agency that increases the likelihood that arguments on behalf of blurring or even erasing ontological (if not metaphysical), moral, psychological, and then of course, legal boundaries between human beings and these new technologies, will have persuasive force in all the wrong quarters for all the wrong reasons.
Patrick S. O'Donnell - February 9, 2012 at 10:07 am
erratum: “such that the mind is equivalent to the brain which is, or is like….”
A.J. Sutter - February 9, 2012 at 11:06 am
Thanks for your reply, Samir. I share Patrick’s concerns @5 and his views on animals @4 if not entirely his relief there@. Time next week permitting, I’ll try to look at the book in order to be able to say something that’s informed by a bigger chunk of it than reproduced above.
Samir Chopra - February 10, 2012 at 9:19 pm
AJ: Chapter 2 is really crucial in understanding why artificial agents should be considered legal agents for the purposes of contracting. The later chapters build on the points developed in there.
Patrick: I think there might be one fundamental point of disagreement between us might be my refusal to consider human intentionality and morality some sort of singularity in the natural order, the attainment of which lies entirely beyond non-carbon based entities. But anyway, as I said, it’s probably best if we have this discussion once you’ve had a look at the developed arguments in the book.
G. Calamita - February 11, 2012 at 9:26 am
I wonder if watching again science fiction movies with has some sort of those drone technologies may help to discover future issue or opportunities.
So iw would be useful to set a list of those movies.
@cypherinfo
Car accident claim lawyers - February 12, 2012 at 1:22 am
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Mark Gubrud - February 15, 2012 at 5:14 pm
Are “artificial autonomous agents”…”beings”?
Only in the trivial sense that they exist.
“What is the standing of these entities in our socio-legal framework? What legal status should artificial agents have?”
They are the property and responsibility of the persons who create and use them. That is as it should be now and forever.
“What is the legal status of the commercial transactions they enter into?”
This is the only place where the issue gets complicated, especially from a legal standpoint. Obviously, there needs to be some limit on the liability of programmers or users of agents for erroneous or unintended transactions, and sorting out who is responsible and to what degree can be complicated. However, postulating that the machine is somehow responsible would be useless and silly.
“Should they be mere things, tools, and instrumentalities?”
It is not a matter of “should”. That is what they are.
“Do they have any rights, duties, obligations?”
No. The people who create and use them do.
“What are the legal strategies to make room for these future residents of our polity and society?”
It is good to know what legal (and rhetorical) strategies might be undertaken in order to “make room for these future residents of our polity and society” so that sane people can work to ensure the defeat of any such strategies.
“The increasing sophistication, use, and social embedding of computerized agents…”
…makes it ever more important that we protect the sovereign status of human beings and that we make it clear, by simple declaration if necessary, that machines are not persons, that it is undesirable to ever create machines that might plausibly claim the natural rights of persons, let alone grant such rights, and that the actions of machines are always the responsibility of the (human) persons who create and use them.
And, BTW, that corporations are not persons, either.
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