
MEPs vote on robots' legal status – and if a kill switch is required - ghosh
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38583360?ocid=socialflow_twitter
======
shakna
> It turns to science fiction, drawing on rules dreamed up by writer Isaac
> Asimov, for how robots should act if and when they become self-aware. The
> laws will be directed at the designers, producers and operators of robots as
> they cannot be converted into machine code.

Aw hell. Asimov's point, or rather one of them, was that the laws were flawed,
and no real set of laws could work. [0]

> Designers may be required to register their robots as well as providing
> access to the source code to investigate accidents and damage caused by
> bots. Designers may also be required to obtain the go-ahead for new robotic
> designs from a research ethics committee.

This sounds great on the surface, until you see the assumption that these
robots will arise out of AI.

Source code is not necessarily reviewable or human parseable for learning
machines.

This whole thing seems to be people thinking we need ethics with AI... So much
so that robots, a term that does not seem well-defined in this context [0],
should be recognised as people.

It reflects a certain lack of education, and of understanding the problems at
hand.

> Producers or owners may, in future, be required to take out insurance cover
> for the damage potentially caused by their robot.

That makes sense, and puts complex electronic machines in the same realm as
all the other electronic machines we already use, today.

Unfortunately, it's one of the few reports that doesn't sound like someone who
just read a couple of sci-fi books and decided to write a reccomendation. It
really does not feel well-researched, nor well versed in the field.

Bias: I have no skill with AI, though fascinated. I have tried and failed to
learn machine learning many times. I'll stick with Simple Bayes and basic
heuristics. I understand only enough to know that the author/s don't seem to.
I might be wrong.

[0] I don't have any Asimov reference, so here's Computerphile's breakdown:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PKx3kS7f4A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PKx3kS7f4A)

[1] Autonomy through sensors or inter-connectivity through data exchange,
self-learning (optional), has physical support, adapts to its environment. The
flaw: A Raspberry Pi in a beer vat that checks the temperature, and alters the
humidity, is now called a 'smart robot'. I'm really not sure that it actually
does classify as robotics.

