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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media contact:
Catharine Skipp
Director of Media Relations and Public Affairs
University of Miami School of Law
cskipp@law.miami.edu
office: 305-284-9810
mobile: 305-773-5801
We Robot 2016 April 1-2 at University of Miami School of Law
The premier conference on legal and policy issues relating to robotics
CORAL GABLES, FL (March 1, 2016) – Would RoboCops eliminate racial bias or merely reflect the systemic nature of racism? Do human-robots systems inherently feature “moral crumple zones” where the human bears the brunt of liability when the robot fails? Is Siri protected by the First Amendment? These, and other timely topics, will be discussed, debated, and dissected at We Robot 2016.
We Robot 2016 is a conference at the intersection of the law, policy, and technology of robotics, to be held in Coral Gables, Florida on April 1 & 2, 2016. We Robot is now in its fifth year, returning to the University of Miami School of Law after being hosted by the University of Washington School of Law last April. The conference website is https://robots.law.miami.edu/2016.
The book, Robot Law, by Miami Law’s A. Michael Froomkin, the Laurie Silvers & Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law and Program Chair for We Robot 2016, and Ryan Calo, the chair of We Robot 2015 and co-director of the UW Tech Policy Lab; and Dr. Ian Kerr, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law & Technology at the University of Ottawa, will launch at the conference on March 31. The book embodies the interdisciplinary ethos of the conference, featuring contributions from engineers, lawyers, roboticists, philosophers, and serving military, and covers topics ranging from sex robots to robot doctors to robots at war.
“We Robot has forged a community of researchers who are working to make the introduction of robots into every walk of life as painless as possible. This is no small task, since robots disrupt our assumptions about responsibility, liability, and even humanity,” said Froomkin.
We Robot 2016 builds on existing scholarship that explores how the increasing sophistication and autonomous decision-making capabilities of robots and their widespread deployment in homes, hospitals, public spaces and battlefields requires rethinking existing legal and policy structures.
“Policymakers of all kinds are already writing rules for drones, driverless cars, and other robots,” Calo said. “We have an obligation as a community of interdisciplinary scholars to provide guidance,” he said. “And I have never been to a more fun conference in my life.”
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The University of Miami’s mission is to educate and nurture students, to create knowledge, and to provide service to our community and beyond. Committed to excellence and proud of the diversity of our University family, we strive to develop future leaders of our nation and the world. www.miami.edu
The University of Miami School of Law’s mission is to foster the intellectual discipline, creativity, and critical skills that will prepare its graduates for the highest standards of professional competence in the practice of law in a global environment subject to continual ― and not always predictable ― transformation; to cultivate a broad range of legal and interdisciplinary scholarship that, working at the cutting edge of its field, enhances the development of law and legal doctrine, and deepens society’s understanding of law and its role in society; and to fulfill the legal profession’s historic duty to promote the interests of justice. www.law.miami.edu
