With the ever-increasing development of robotics and artificial intelligence, the world is changing by leaps and bounds and what a few years ago we saw as a future reality is now part of the present.
And, as usual, the law is always one step behind technology. That is why, in order to get ahead and prevent harmful consequences arising from new developments, the scientific and technological community is already calling for the need to legislate on robots.
Although they are currently only in their initial phase, it will not be long before they become machines capable of responding in real time to human actions without being previously programmed.
These capabilities undoubtedly bring enormous advantages in many areas, but at the same time they pose a threat.
A few weeks ago, 144 technology leaders, including Elon Musk , signed an open letter warning of the dangers of artificial intelligence applied to robotics, stating that it is “the greatest threat we face as a civilization.”
They are joined by researchers such as Ryan Calo , a law professor at the australia phone number University of Washington, who, after analyzing numerous rulings on robots, concludes that the justice system considers this technology to be programmable tools, a vision that does not correspond to reality.
And if machines acquire human behavior, should they be considered morally or, at least, legally as such?
For David Hanson , founder of Hanson Robotics, the development of moral thoughts in robots, although likely, is still far away because to do so they need to understand non-verbal communication of humans.
Henny Admoni , a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, adds in the Financial Times that it is the increasing independence with which robots work, having been designed by humans, which makes them susceptible to ethical judgment.
It is still too early to talk about responsibility, according to Murray Shanahan, a researcher at Google DeepMind . “I don’t think it’s the right time to talk about robot rights, although I agree with those who believe that robots will one day have a conscience,” he says.
However, today, the evolution of technology is so unpredictable and its progress so rapid that at least preventive regulation is almost mandatory.
The European Parliament has already initiated the process of setting up a committee of experts on robotics and artificial intelligence to explore the possibility of regulating this area.