#56 – Turner on Rules for Robots

Algocracy and Transhumanism Podcast

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 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