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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20534/EJLPS-17-1-17-21
Sheliazhenko Yurii Vadymovych, KROK University, post-graduate student, Faculty of Law E-mail: [email protected]
Artificial Personal Autonomy and Concept of Robot Rights
Abstract: Trend of technophobia in recent discussion about legal and ethical regulations on robotics was obscured the perspective of increasing human liberty with power of autonomous artificial persons created through modern technologies. Studying of personal autonomy as scope of objective rights and freedoms leads to concept of robot rights, such as right to exist and perform own mission, caused by robot duty to serve human and derived from human rights, linked with human duties before society.
Keywords: human rights, personal autonomy, artificial person, robotics, robot rights.
Introduction
Autonomy in Greek (auroç vo^oç) means "own law", technically it can be human beliefs or computer (robot) program. In the study of personal autonomy, characterized by Kai Moller as scope of rights in one general right to realize every interest according to self-conception [1], author was found scheme of three stages of personal autonomy evolution: from practicing freedom through accepting responsibility to create tradition, from practicing tradition through accepting alternatives to create law, and from practicing law through accepting reforms to create more freedom — if rebellion don't interrupt evolution in cases of avoid responsibility, alternatives, or reforms [2]. Developing personal autonomy is creating capital of safe liberty, free will and controlled property in own legal system, balanced with other private and public legal systems. Thinking about create working model of autonomous capital's growth for scientific and educational purpose, similar to business games in management, author start to research artificial personal autonomy and formulate own vision of robot rights, inheriting (like in object-oriented programming) from human rights. Robot rights concept have historical and contemporary context.
Designing Laws of Robotics
In the XX century, when the technologies of cybernetics, informatics and robotics allowed people to create and control complex machines able to independent work and communication, Isaac Asimov published the book of science fiction "I, Robot" with the next "Three Laws of Robotics": (I) A robot may
not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; (II) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; (III) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws [3].
In 2010 U. S. House of Representatives affirmed the growing importance of robotics technology, supported second week in April each year as official annual event, National Robotics Week, recognizing the accomplishments of Isaac Asimov, "who immigrated to America, taught science, wrote science books for children and adults, first used the term robotics, developed the Three Laws of Robotics, and died in April, 1992" [4].
Report with recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics (2015/2103 (INL)), approved by European Parliament's Committee on Legal Affairs, calls to consider "creating a specific legal status for robots in the long run, so that at least the most sophisticated autonomous robots could be established as having the status of electronic persons responsible for making good any damage they may cause, and possibly applying electronic personality to cases where robots make autonomous decisions or otherwise interact with third parties independently" [5]. With the report published the study "European Civil Law Rules in Robotics", strongly criticizing the idea of autonomous robots having a legal personality: "Traditionally, when assigning an entity legal personality, we
seek to assimilate it to humankind. This is the case with animal rights, with advocates arguing that animals should be assigned a legal personality since some are conscious beings, capable of suffering, etc., and so of feelings which separate them from things. Yet the motion for a resolution does not tie the acceptance of the robot's legal personality to any potential consciousness. Legal personality is therefore not linked to any regard for the robot's inner being or feelings, avoiding the questionable assumption that the robot is a conscious being. Assigning robots such personality would, then, meet a simple operational objective arising from the need to make robots liable for their actions... In reality, advocates of the legal personality. view the robot. as a genuine thinking artificial creation, humanity's alter ego. We believe it would be inappropriate and out-of-place not only to recognize the existence of an electronic person but to even create any such legal personality. creating a new type of person — an electronic person — sends a strong signal which could not only reignite the fear of artificial beings but also call into question Europe's humanist foundations. Robots should serve humanity and should have no other role, except in the realms of science-fiction" [6]. Such criticism seems unreasonable, particularly, because automatic reactions of robots traditionally designing as models of animal emotions with intent to create artificial personality, and trained animals are sort of robots. Isaac Asimov, author of "Three Laws of Robotics", believes that humans would also follow the Laws [7], e. g. humans should serve humanity. In short story "Evidence" he shows similarity of human ethics and his hypothetic laws of robotics, describes how honest robot can be civil servant or even democratically elected leader.
For the opinion of Woody Evans, humans have the moral obligation towards the machines to recognize some sort of robot rights, similar to human rights or animal rights [8]. But discussion on legal status of robots in contemporary world poisoned by fear and restrictive intentions. Some NGO's start the "Campaign to Stop Killer Robots" aimed to prohibit using of lethal autonomous weapons. Elon Musk warns about robot armies and robots taking human jobs (who cares now, that smartphone take jobs of messenger boys?), proposed governments to pay hu-
mans universal basic income. Bill Gates proposed robot tax, despite some robots performing nonprofit missions.
Autonomous Thing and Effectiveness of Law
Some legal scientists say that robot is a thing, property, not the person, and things have no rights. That way of arguing proved to be wrong on the two examples. First example is corporation, traditionally recognized as artificial person with some rights [9], but also may be considered as property [10]. When robots start to replace humans in industry, Herbert A. Simon wrote that corporation can be managed by machines [11], and we see realization of that idea in modern world: machines managing social networks, summarizing financial balances and results of voting, appointing judges to particular cases in Ukrainian courts, etc. Second example is information, both intellectual property and, if we talk about legal information, regulator of our life, the rights and the legislation itself. Finally, we can note that justification of slavery also was based on neglecting unalienable value of beings, legally considered as things. Latin phrase of famous philosopher and cosmopolite Seneca, "Homo sacra res homini", means "Human is sacred thing for human", express ideas of self-ownership and equality.
Modern world is ruled by artificial persons, such as idealized or fictional leaders and brands, bureaucratic apparatus of state, financial mechanism of bank etc. When we communicate with hybrid mechanism, included human as part of it, for example call-center, sometimes we can't even know, robot or human speaks to us, because human operator just follow instructions of computer program.
Author agrees with opinion of academician Volodymyr Kopieichykov, that ignoring human personal autonomy, particularly on the ground of technocratic elitism, lead to substantive distortion of democracy [12]. Furthermore, in the past author criticized trying to claim that particular chatbot pass Turing test, successfully pretend to chat like human
[13].
But it's also true that artificial persons serve good for humanity: organizations allow enjoying more freedom and take some part of responsibility; computer, phone, website robots with humane interfaces help people more effectively work and socialize; so-
cial roles, including those in social networks, help people establish connections. Every threat caused by robots can be avoid by robots, like automatic spam filters clean email inbox from automatically sent advertising.
Proposing mathematical model of control legislative process, Iryna Onopchuk mention that such sort of models helps avoid undesirable experiments in reality; also she formulated the task of control legislative process: to reach optimal social effect with minimal legislation [14]. That task expressing legal ideal of law enforcement with saving the force, minimizing coercion: morally and technically it will be better, if people keep the law by their free choice. That's why natural law doctrine proclaimed supremacy of laws of nature, empirically revealed causal relations between actions and results, repeated in equal conditions everywhere, anytime without any additional efforts and can be solid ground of legal technologies, created to improve social reality. People, avoiding troubles and saving the force, trying don't spoil human life, so, every human have the right to life. People trying don't break the things too, so, things have the right to exist, because even thing have some structure, "strength of materials", and machines also bring the human will, embedded into their structure and program.
Realizing unity of human will and property, machines can be considered as autonomous capital. But current level of legal protection of that capital is desperately low. Wars of cyber-tycoons, manipulations from politics and security forces cause many violations of human rights. For example, when in Turkey all Google Sites hosting was blocked because of one site with sensitive political criticism, European Court of Human Rights in case ofAhmet Yildirim v. Turkey finds there violation of right to freedom of expression of scientist who own other site on that hosting [15]. Law enforcers seize and invade computers, mobile phones because of inadequately weak legal status of these devices compared with its critical importance to private life.
Robot Rights Inheriting from Human Rights
Considering the construction of robot rights, author chooses human rights as the source of robot rights. Robots deserve legal guarantees of their rights because of performing complex duties, serving the
people, developing nature, harmonizing social relations. In the sphere of private life long times been used technical protection of human rights, such as lock, which protects the home from invasion. Now complex functions in society perform robots capable to automatic actions similar to the human will, and their autonomous functionality expands the legal sphere of human personal autonomy.
Extending legal protection of human rights and personal autonomy on the property presumed in the Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights [16], which requires respect for home and correspondence, and Article 1 of Protocol to the Convention, that extends on legal persons human right to protection of property.
Author created own experimental online chat-bot-jurist, who compare human rights and robot rights. NGO "Autonomous Advocacy" announced start of robot rights defending project [17] and, for the first move, officially provide legal and technical support for that chatbot. There are follows system of robot rights and human rights, recognized in private legal system of NGO "Autonomous Advocacy" [18].
First robot right to exist is recognition of artificial personality as legal mechanism ofhuman will. Similar human right to life is principle that protection of human life, personhood, freedom and security is the duty of every person.
Second robot right to autonomy is realizing robot rights under own program, without abuse, avoiding any harm. Similar human right to freedom is realizing human rights by free will without abuse, avoiding any harm.
Third robot right to integrity is prohibition of breaking, destroying or corrupting the robot. Similar human right to dignity is principle that human must be protected from suffering.
Fourth robot right to inviolability is protection from interference and interruption of lawful robot function. Similar human right to security is principle of safe life without fear and risks.
Fifth robot right to function is principle that robot must perform its functions and program, to belong and serve human without deprivation and disabling. Similar human right to belief is principle that human may choose own way of life according to own intentions, religion, belief, knowledge.
Sixth robot right to individuality means distinction of robot by qualities, different from other individuals. Similar human right to privacy is principle of non-intrusion to personal life.
Seventh robot right to extension is principle that lawful function of robot may include increasing of experience, storage and contacts, self-improving. Similar human right to property is principle of protection of human possessions and any forms of profitable capital.
Eighth robot right to communication allows informational activities, generating, collecting and spreading information by robot. Similar human right to expression is freedom of thought, speech and informational activities, participation in social dialog and in democratic procedures.
Ninth robot right to system is ability to cooperation with humans, robots, and other subjects oflaw, forming operational and other systems, inclusion there. Similar human right to publicity (popularity, socialization) is principle of freedom of creating social connections, assemblies, associations.
Tenth robot right to stability is rule of law, access to technical and legal maintenance, robot rights protection by human owner and self-defense. Similar human right to justice is equality before the law, non-discrimination, and access to effective remedies such as court and legal aid, self-defense.
Conclusion and Proposal
Contemporary natural and social technologies allows human to create artificial persons, such as corporations or robots, and to transform human will and property into autonomous capital with legally designed rights and responsibilities, inheriting from human rights and responsibilities, with inner source of function, built by imitation of human self-ownership, self-control, self-rule. Furthermore, doctrine of natural law helps us to recognize in any sort of objects technically autonomous subjects of the universal laws of nature, which is empirically figured forms and consequences of freedom, enforced by smart practices for the development of reality. So, the legal approach can be applied for strengthening the autonomy of science, all capital of human knowledge, for increase level of human liberty and for effective regulation of any object, even beyond the competence of authorities that pretend to monopoly in establishing laws but obviously can't directly control all autonomous beings. For the better performance of autonomous capital author propose to design simulations of legal system design, to build mathematical and computer models of personal autonomy evolution for choosing the best individual ways of developing personal autonomy, particularly for private persons and organizations, as well as for artificial persons such as autonomous robots.
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