Episode #23 - Liu on Responsibility and Discrimination in Autonomous Weapons and Self-Driving Cars

In this episode I talk to Hin-Yan Liu. Hin-Yan is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Copenhagen. His research interests lie at the frontiers of emerging technology governance, and in the law and policy of existential risks. His core agenda focuses upon the myriad challenges posed by artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics regulation. We talk about responsibility gaps in the deployment of autonomous weapons and crash optimisation algorithms for self-driving cars.

You can download the episode here or listen below. You can also subscribe on Stitcher and iTunes (the RSS feed is here).

Show Notes

• 0:00 - Introduction

• 1:03 - What is an autonomous weapon?

• 4:14 - The responsibility gap in the autonomous weapons debate

• 7:20 - The circumstantial responsibility gap

• 13:44 - The conceptual responsibility gap

• 21:00 - A tracing solution to the conceptual problem?

• 27:47 - Should we use strict liability standards to plug the gap(s)?

• 29:48 - What can we learn from the child soldiers debate

• 33:02 - Crash optimisation algorithms for self-driving cars

• 36:15 - Could self-driving cars give rise to structural discrimination?

• 46:10 - Why it may not be easy to solve the structural discrimination problem

• 49:35 - The Immunity Device Thought Experiment

• 54:12 - Distinctions between the immunity device and other forms of insurance

• 59:30 - What's missing from the self-driving car debate?

 

Links

• Hin-Yan's faculty webpage

• Hin-Yan's academia.edu page

• 'Autonomy in Weapons Systems' by Hin-Yan

• 'Refining Responsibility: Differentiating Two Types of Responsibility Issues Raised by Autonomous Weapons Systems' by Hin-Yan

• 'The Ethics of Crash Optimisation Algorithms' by John Danaher

• 'The Ethics of Autonomous Cars' by Patrick Lin

• Interview with Sven Nyholm about Trolley Problems and Self-Driving Cars

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