I’m not entirely convinced that I believe that there is such a thing as a robot, as distinct from “a computer in a special case” or “a specialized peripheral for a computer.”
I actually thought Ryan Calo did a very good job arguing for robots as distinct from “a computer in a special case”, though perhaps the “special case”-ing of robot needs to be further refined. To draw such a broad metaphor paints the picture that a robot is nothing more than a dumb tool that cannot observe its surrounding, access and render judgement, then execute upon it, which I believe to be false.
To quote his definition in the paper:
robots are best thought of as artificial objects or systems that sense, process, and act upon the world to at least some degree.
While it is true that it all boils down to lines of code and it can be hard for us to truly figure out how “intelligent” a software system is, in my opinion (CS person, not a lawyer) it is overly simplistic to categorically say that all robots are nothing more than systems that act on pre-determined rules.
Sure, a robot can seem “smart” for a while if it is programmed to buy this stock if it hits $X sell if $Y, but I think it can be agreed that this is just a simple program. However, Machine Learning techniques allows the robot to improve over time and learn based on pass mistakes, which Ryan touches on as part of “emergence”. These dumb tools can slowly become smarter over time (subject to limits in learning algorithms/input/etc). More crucially, based on these improvements, the judgement and behavior of the system will change to better suit their function.
The more interesting part is not that they will change better over time, but the unintended side-effects of such improvement, which cannot be foreseen by anyone.
So perhaps the definition of robots as it pertains to whether there is material difference to computers today, and thus whether it should be treated as exception in terms of law, hinges on its ability to learn.
That said, Ryan Calo says in the paper that he is “hard-pressed to point to systemic innovations in doctrine that owe their origin to cyberspace … the Internet did not lead to a new agency”, which I disagree on. Fundamentally, law is constrained by distance, people’s willingness to respect its rule, and the power wielded by those enforcing them. On the other hand, “code is law” (and enforcer) on the internet, and I think the Internet just has not had time to develop a new agency… yet.
