#56 - Turner on Rules for Robots

In this episode I talk to Jacob Turner. Jacob is a barrister and author. We chat about his new book, Robot Rules: Regulating Artificial Intelligence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), which discusses how to address legal responsibility, rights and ethics for AI.

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Show Notes

• 0:00 - Introduction

• 1:33 - Why did Jacob write Robot Rules?

• 2:47 - Do we need special legal rules for AI?

• 6:34 - The responsibility 'gap' problem

• 11:50 - Private law vs criminal law: why it's important to remember the distinction

• 14:08 - Is is easy to plug the responsibility gap in private law?

• 23:07 - Do we need to think about the criminal law responsibility gap?

• 26:14 - Is it absurd to hold AI criminally responsible?

• 30:24 - The problem with holding proximate humans responsible

• 36:40 - The positive side of responsibility: lessons from the Monkey selfie case

• 41:50 - What is legal personhood and what would it mean to grant it to an AI?

• 48:57 - Pragmatic reasons for granting an AI legal personhood

• 51:48 - Is this a slippery slope?

• 56:00 - Explainability and AI: Why is this important?

• 1:02:38 - Is there are right to explanation under EU law?

• 1:06:16 - Is explainability something that requires a technical solution not a legal solution?

• 1:08:32 - The danger of fetishising explainability

Relevant Links

• Robot Rules: Regulating Artificial Intelligence

• Website for the book

• Jacob on Twitter

• Jacob giving a lecture about the book at the University of Law

• "Robots, Law and the Retribution Gap" by John Danaher

• The Darknet Shopper Case

• The Monkey Selfie Case

• Algorithmic Entities by Lynn LoPucki (discussing Shawn Bayern's argument)

• Matthew Scherer's critique of Bayern's claim that AI's can already acquire legal personhood

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