This is the first in a series of posts we will be running about the upcoming presentations at We Robot 2014. Registration is still open. Subscribe to our RSS feed or follow on us on Twitter for more updates.
Regulating the Loop: Ironies of Automation Law
Meg Leta Ambrose
Rapid developments in sensors, computing, and robotics, as well as power, kinetics, control, telecommunication, and artificial intelligence have presented opportunities to further integrate sophisticated automation across society. With these opportunities come questions about the ability of current laws and policies to protect important social values new technologies may threaten. As sophisticated automation moves beyond the cages of factories and cock pits, the need for a legal approach suitable to guide an increasingly automated future becomes more pressing.
Meg Leta Ambrose
This paper analyzes examples of legal approaches to automation thus far by legislative, administrative, judicial, state, and international bodies. The case studies reveal an interesting irony: while automation regulation is intended to protect and promote human values, by focusing on the capabilities of the automation, this approach results in less protection of human values. The irony is similar to those pointed out by Lisanne Bainbridge in 1983, when she described how designing automation to improve the life of the operator using an automation-centered approach actually made the operator’s life worse and more difficult.
The ironies that result from automation-centered legal approaches are a product of the neglect of the sociotechnical nature of automation: the relationships between man and machine is situated and interdependent; humans will always be in the loop; and reactive policies ignore the need for general guidance for ethical and accountable automation design and implementation. Like system engineers three decades ago, policymakers must adjust the focus of legal treatment of automation to recognize the interdependence of man and machine to avoid the ironies of automation law and meet the goals of ethical integration. The article proposes that the existing models for automated system design and principles currently utilized for safe and actual implementation be added to for ethical and sociotechnical legal approach to automation.
Meg Leta Ambrose will present “The Law and the Loop” with discussant Elizabeth Grossman on Friday, April 4th at 8:45 AM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.
