Skype's Homeland Grapples With Dilemma of Robot as Legal Person
Skype's Homeland Grapples With Dilemma of Robot as Legal
Person
Estonia drafting law to stay among pioneers in automation
Regulations already in place for driverless parcel
delivery
By Ott Ummelas October 9, 2017, 7:00 PM PDT
Estonia, the country which helped create Skype and hosts
NATO’s cyber-defense center, is also trying to stay ahead of the pack in
regulating robotics.
The Economy Ministry is working on legislation that would
address the status of artificial intelligence in legal disputes, said Siim
Sikkut, the official in charge of the government’s IT strategy. One proposal
under consideration would create the term "robot-agent," which would
be somewhere between having a separate legal personality and an object that is
someone else’s property.
Sikkut said he saw advantages to elevating artificial
intelligence to the same judicial level as natural and legal persons. In any
case, the ministry first needs to amass enough political support to press ahead
with the case.
“If we seize this opportunity as a government, we could
be one of the trail blazers,” Sikkut said in an interview in Tallinn on Friday.
While increased automation is presenting many countries
around the world with regulatory issues, including rules for self-driving cars
and drones, Estonia has been embracing new digital technologies at a faster
clip than most others. The Baltic nation of 1.3 million has introduced
paperless government, nationwide Internet voting and remote access to Estonian
digital infrastructure for foreigners, dubbed E-residency. Still, officials
would like to make it easier for companies to use digital technologies.
Robots and Humanism
Driverless parcel delivery robots of Tallinn-based
Starship Technologies Inc., set up by founding members of Skype, were
authorized by Estonian parliament in June to move in traffic without human
assistants at speeds up to 6 kilometers per hour. The user of a self-driving robot
is obligated to have liability insurance and the robot must be equipped with
the user’s contact details.
Lawmakers at the European Parliament adopted a resolution
in February urging the European Commission to consider legislation and
potential special status for robots, such as self-driving vehicles, to
establish who is liable for damages they may potentially inflict. Sikkut said
he isn’t aware of any government currently preparing a robotics law outside
Estonia, adding that the new rules can hopefully be implemented “within a
couple of years.”
Estonia still has many hurdles ahead. Giving robots
personal rights and responsibilities "goes against Europe’s humanist
history of law,” noted Triniti, the law firm that prepared a legal analysis for
the ministry on the issue.
“We need to get plenty of myths and stereotypes out of
the way early on," Sikkut said. "Like that robots are taking over
everything or that we’re going too far with computerization. Of course, these
questions need to be addressed with all new technologies.”
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