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Discussants and Moderators: Day Two – April 2nd

We Robot 2016 presentations feature Discussants and Moderators who are in integral part of the conference. Discussants are the lead speakers in their session and are responsible for presenting the main themes of the paper and offering their views. Moderators are the ringmasters of their panels.

Matt Beane

Matt Beane

Matt Beane is the We Robot 2016 Discussant for Aurelia Tamò and Christoph Lutz’s paper Privacy and healthcare robots – An ANT analysis on Saturday, April 2nd at 8:30 AM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Matt, a PhD candidate in spring 2016 from MIT Sloan School of Management, is an expert in human-robot interaction in the workplace. At MIT, Matt has focused on problems and opportunities associated with integrating robots into complex collaborative work. He has completed projects on robotic surgery, robotic materials transport, and robotic telepresence in healthcare, elder care and business. His work on robotic telepresence in a post-surgical ICU was recently published in Organization Science, one of two top management journals focused on novel organizational phenomena. He was selected in 2012 as a Human Robot Interaction Pioneer, and is a regular contributor to MIT’s Technology Review and Robohub. Matt has taught a variety of courses at MIT; his “Business of Robotics” course regularly attracts students and industry experts. Before MIT Sloan, Matt was a principal in a management consulting firm focused on group and team dynamics.

Harry Surden

Harry Surden

Harry Surden is the We Robot 2016 Discussant for Aaron Mannes’ paper Institutional Options for Robot Governance on Saturday, April 2nd at 10:00 AM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Harry Surden is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School. He joined the faculty in 2008. His scholarship centers upon intellectual property law with a substantive focus on patents and copyright, information privacy law, legal informatics and legal automation, and the application of computer technology within the legal system. Prior to joining CU, Professor Surden was a resident fellow at the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics (CodeX) at Stanford Law School. In that capacity, Professor Surden conducted interdisciplinary research with collaborators from the Stanford School of Engineering exploring the application of computer technology towards improving the legal system. He was also a member of the Stanford Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse and the director of the Computer Science and Law Initiative. Professor Surden was law clerk to the Honorable Martin J. Jenkins of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. He received his law degree from Stanford Law School with honors and was the recipient of the Stanford Law Intellectual Property Writing Award. Prior to law school, Professor Surden worked as a software engineer for Cisco Systems and Bloomberg L.P. He received his undergraduate degree with honors from Cornell University. Professor Surden is an Affiliated Faculty Member at The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics (CodeX).

Mary Anne Franks

Mary Anne Franks

Mary Anne Franks is the We Robot 2016 Discussant for Peter Asaro’s paper Will #BlackLivesMatter to RoboCop? on Saturday, April 2nd at 11:30 AM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Dr. Mary Anne Franks is a Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law, where she teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, First Amendment law, family law, and a course on Law, Policy, and Technology. Before joining the UM faculty, Dr. Franks was a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago School of Law and a Lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard University. Dr. Franks received her J.D. in 2007 from Harvard Law School and her D.Phil in 2004 and M.Phil in 2001 from Oxford University, where she studied on a Rhodes Scholarship. Her areas of research include free speech, online abuse, discrimination, and gun violence. She is also the Legislative & Tech Policy Director and Vice-President of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), a non-profit organization dedicated to challenging online harassment and abuse. In that capacity, Professor Franks advises tech industry leaders on privacy and abuse issues and has helped legislators in more than two dozen US states and the federal government draft legislation to protect sexual privacy. She is also a co-producer of the documentary Hot Girls Wanted, which examines the “professional amateur” porn industry. Her academic scholarship has appeared in publications such as the California Law Review and the UCLA Law Review; her popular press publications include The Atlantic, the Guardian, TIME Magazine, and the Huffington Post.

Margot Kaminski

Margot Kaminski

Margot E. Kaminski is the We Robot 2016 Discussant for Helen Norton and Toni Massaro’s paper Siriously? Free Speech Rights for Artificial Intelligence on Saturday, April 2nd at 3:15 PM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Margot E. Kaminski is an Assistant Professor of Law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. She teaches, researches, and writes on law and technology. Her work has focused on privacy, speech, and online civil liberties, in addition to international intellectual property law and legal issues raised by AI and robotics. Recently, much of her work has focused on domestic drones (UAS). Kaminski is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School. While at Yale, she co-founded the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic (MFIA), a law school clinic dedicated to increasing government transparency, defending the essential work of news gatherers, and protecting freedom of expression. She was a law clerk to the Honorable Andrew J. Kleinfeld of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Fairbanks, Alaska. She worked at a literary agency prior to law school, and has worked at Creative Commons and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. From 2011-2014 Kaminski served as the executive director of theInformation Society Project at Yale Law School, an intellectual center addressing the implications of new information technologies for law and society. She remains an affiliated fellowof the Yale ISP.

Ian Kerr

Ian Kerr

Ian R. Kerr is the We Robot 2016 Discussant for William D. Smart’s paper What do We Really Know About Robots and the Law? on Saturday, April 2nd at 4:30 PM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Ian Kerr is recognized as an international expert in emerging law and technology issues. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law, and Technology at the University of Ottawa. He is currently teaching a seminar course on the philosophical, ethical & legal implications of robots and society entitled, “The Robotic Laws.” He teaches contracts as well as a unique upper-year seminar offered each year during the month of January in Puerto Rico that brings students from very different legal traditions together to exchange culture, values, and ideas and to unite in the study of technology law issues of global importance (TechnoRico). His devotion to teaching has earned six awards and citations, including the Bank of Nova Scotia Award of Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the University of Western Ontario’s Faculty of Graduate Studies’ Award of Teaching Excellence, and the University of Ottawa’s AEECLSS Teaching Excellence Award. Kerr was educated at the University of Alberta and the University of Western Ontario. In addition to co-authoring the widely used business law text, Managing the Law (co-authored by Mitchell McInnes, Anthony VanDuzer, and Chi Carmody), he has published in the areas of ethical and legal aspects of digital copyright, automated electronic commerce, artificial intelligence, cybercrime, nanotechnology, internet regulation, ISP and intermediary liability, online defamation, pre-natal injuries and unwanted pregnancies. His current program of research includes two large projects: (i) On the Identity Trail, focusing on the impact of information and authentication technologies on our identity and our right to be anonymous; and (ii) An Examination of Digital Copyright, focusing on various aspects of the current effort to reform Canadian copyright legislation, including the implications of such reform on fundamental Canadian values including privacy and freedom of expression. Professor Kerr is also the originator of Kerr’s Postulate which states that in any discussion of law and technology, the longer a discussion continues the probability of including a reference to The Matrix approaches one. Kerr’s Postulate is a play on Godwin’s Law stemming from academic research on the man/machine merger andartificial intelligence. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Ottawa, he held a joint appointment in the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Information & Media Studies and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario.

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We Robot Authors: Day Two – April 2nd

We Robot 2016 is rooted in contributions by academics, practitioners, and others in the form of scholarly papers or demonstrations of technology or other projects. These presentations explore the increasing sophistication and decision-making capabilities of robots, which disrupts existing legal regimes or requires rethinking of various policy issues. 

Aurelia Tamò

Aurelia Tamò

Aurelia Tamò and Christoph Lutz will join We Robot 2016 to present their paper Privacy and Healthcare Robots – An ANT Analysis on Saturday, April 2nd at 8:30 AM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Aurelia Tamò is a PhD student at the Chair for Information and Communication Law at the University of Zurich. She is a guest researcher at the Institute for Pervasive Computing at ETH Zurich and at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. In her PhD research project Aurelia analyzes technical measures and designs for data protection. For her research she was granted a Doc.CH scholarship by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Her overall research interests include various topics within the interdisciplinary field of law and technology such as privacy or copyright and regulatory developments in these fields. More recently she became interested in robotics and the impact of in particular social robots on the current social and ethical structures. Aurelia has a background in law and economics and holds a Master degree from the University of St. Gallen. Aurelia’s publications can be found on ResearchGate. Tweets via @a_a_tamo.

Christoph Lutz

Christoph Lutz

Christoph Lutz is a researcher in the field of new communication technologies and social media. In 2015, he obtained his PhD from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, with a cumulative dissertation on online participation and participation divides in Germany. In the same year, he worked as a visiting scholar at the Oxford Internet Institute. As of 2016, Christoph is assistant professor at BI Norwegian Business School and senior researcher at the University of Leipzig. Christoph has a background in sociology, economics and media science. His research interests include privacy; social media, especially in science, politics and public administration; trust; serendipity; and social robots. Christoph has published in leading new media, Internet and information systems journals (JMIS, JASIST, Information Communication & Society, International Journal of Communication, Social Media & Society etc.) and presented at various conferences and workshops (AOM, ICA, ACM Webscience etc.). More information about Christoph can be found on ResearchGate, Google Scholar and Twitter (@lutzid)

Aaron Mannes

Aaron Mannes

Aaron Mannes will join We Robot 2016 to present his paper Institutional Options for Robot Governance on Saturday, April 2nd at 10:00 AM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Dr. Aaron Mannes is an American Association for the Advancement of Science Technology Policy Fellow with the Apex Data Analytics Engine at the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency. Dr. Mannes earned his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy in 2014. His dissertation topic was the evolving national security role of the vice president. From 2004 to 2015 Dr. Mannes was a researcher at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) where he was the subject matter expert on terrorism and international affairs collaborating with a team of inter-disciplinary scientists to build computational tools to support decision-makers facing 21st century security and development problems. At UMIACS Dr. Mannes co-authored numerous papers and two books on using computational tools to understand and counter terrorism. Dr. Mannes is the author of Profiles in Terror: The Guide to Middle East Terrorist Organizations (Rowman & Littlefield 2004), and has written scores of articles, papers, and book chapters on an array of topics including Middle East affairs, terrorism, technology, and other international security issues for popular and scholarly publications including Politico, Policy Review, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, The Journal of International Security Affairs, The Huffington Post, The National Interest, The Jerusalem Post, and The Guardian. Dr. Mannes can be reached through his website www.aaronmannes.com

Peter Asaro

Peter Asaro

Peter Asaro will join We Robot 2016 to present his paper Will #BlackLivesMatter to RoboCop? on Saturday, April 2nd at 11:30 AM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Dr. Peter Asaro is a philosopher of science, technology and media. His work examines artificial intelligence and robotics as a form of digital media, and the ways in which technology mediates social relations and shapes our experience of the world. His current research focuses on the social, cultural, political, legal and ethical dimensions of military robotics and UAV drones, from a perspective that combines media theory with science and technology studies. He has written widely-cited papers on lethal robotics from the perspective of just war theory and human rights. Dr. Asaro’s research also examines agency and autonomy, liability and punishment, and privacy and surveillance as it applies to consumer robots, industrial automation, smart buildings, and autonomous vehicles. His research has been published in international peer reviewed journals and edited volumes, and he is currently writing a book that interrogates the intersections between advanced robotics, and social and ethical issues. Dr. Asaro has held research positions at the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University, the HUMlab of Umeå University in Sweden, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. He has also developed technologies in the areas of virtual reality, data visualization and sonification, human-computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robot vision, and neuromorphic robotics at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA), the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and Iguana Robotics, Inc., and was involved in the design of the natural language interface for the Wolfram|Alpha computational knowledge engine forWolfram Research–this interface is also used by Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Bing to answer math queries, and won two 2010 SXSW Web Interactive Awards for Technical Achievement and Best of Show. He is completing an Oral History of Robotics project that is funded by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and the National Endowment for the Humanities Office of Digital Humanities. He has also just initiated a new three-year project on Regulating Autonomous Artificial Agents: A Systematic Approach to Developing AI & Robot Policy, funded by the Future of Life InstituteDr. Asaro received his PhD in the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he also earned a Master of Arts from the Department of Philosophy, and a Master of Computer Science from the Department of Computer Science.

Helen Norton

Helen Norton

Helen Norton and Toni Massaro will join We Robot 2016 to present their paper Siriously? Free Speech Rights for Artificial Intelligence on Saturday, April 2nd at 3:15 PM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Helen Norton joined the Colorado Law faculty in 2007, after earlier serving as a visiting professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and as the E. George Rudolph Distinguished Visiting Chair at the University of Wyoming College of Law. Her scholarly and teaching interests include constitutional law, civil rights, and employment discrimination law; she has been honored with the Excellence in Teaching Award on multiple occasions and was appointed a University of Colorado Presidential Teaching Scholar in 2014. She served as leader of President-elect Obama’s transition team charged with reviewing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2008, and is frequently invited to testify before Congress and federal agencies on civil rights law and policy issues. Before entering academia, Professor Norton served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she managed the Civil Rights Division’s Employment Litigation, Educational Opportunities, and Coordination and Review Sections, and as Director of Legal and Public Policy at the National Partnership for Women & Families, where she practiced appellate litigation and engaged in administrative and legislative advocacy on a range of employment and civil rights matters. She holds a J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, where she served as Associate Editor of the California Law Review, and a B.A. from Stanford University, where she graduated with distinction.

Toni Massaro

Toni Massaro

Professor Toni Massaro received her B.S. degree, with highest distinction, from Northwestern University. She obtained her law degree from the College of William and Mary, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the William and Mary Law Review. Massaro was in private practice in Chicago with Vedder, Price, Kaufman and Kammholz. She also has taught at Washington and Lee University, Stanford University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and the University of Florida. Prof. Massaro joined the faculty at the University of Arizona College of Law in 1989. Since 1997, she has been the Milton O. Riepe Chair in Constitutional Law. In 2006, she was named a Regent’s Professor by the Arizona Board of Regents. From 1999 – 2009, she served as Dean of the College of Law, the first woman to hold that post. Prof. Massaro is the author of The Arc of Due Process in American Constitutional Law (with E. Thomas Sullivan), Constitutional Literacy:  A Core Curriculum for a Multicultural Nation, and Civil Procedure:  Cases and Problems (with Barbara Allen Babcock and Norman Spaulding). She also is the author of dozens of law review articles on constitutional law, shame penalties, and law and emotion. She currently teaches Constitutional Law I, First Amendment, and Equal Protection. Prof. Massaro is an eight time recipient of the Teacher of the Year Award.

William D. Smart

Bill Smart

William D. Smart will join We Robot 2016 to present his paper What do We Really Know About Robots and the Law? on Saturday, April 2nd at 4:30 PM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Bill Smart is an Associate Professor at Oregon State University, where he co-directs the Robotics program.  He holds a Ph.D. and Sc.M. in Computer Science from Brown University, an M.Sc. in Intelligent Robotics from the University of Edinburgh, and a B.Sc. (hons) in Computer Science from the University of Dundee.  Prior to moving to Oregon State in 2012, he was an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, with a courtesy appointment in Biomedical Engineering, at Washington University in St. Louis.  His research interests cover the fields of human-robot interaction, machine learning, and mobile robotics.  His recent work has focused on how robots and robotic technologies can be used for people with severe motor disabilities.  He is particularly proud of his Erdős (3), and his Bacon number (also 3).

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‘Openrov and Openrov Trident: Democratizing Exploration, Conservation, and Marine Science Through Low-Cost Open-Source Underwater Robots’

Andrew Thaler

Andrew Thaler

Andrew Thaler of OpenROV
 and Joey Maier of Polk State will present a demonstration of their underwater robot.

They will explain how providing a platform that is accessible to a majority of ocean stakeholder groups and can operate in marine and freshwater systems empowers researchers, citizen scientists, and conservation workers. Underwater robots provide the ability to broadcast discoveries in real time, allowing both greater participation from the general public and more transparency. Low­ cost, open­ source underwater robots, like the OpenROV, are a powerful tool that can fundamentally alter the way people interact with the oceans. The OpenROV 2.8 and OpenROV Trident are among the most capable underwater robots available to consumers. Their open­ source architecture makes the eminently expandable and hackable, presenting a tremendous opportunity to ocean stakeholders with particular needs and a limited budget. Both are capable of diving to 100 meters, are extremely portable, and have a 2 hour+ endurance. For this demonstration, the capabilities of both OpenROVs will be discussed, along with the description of field projects that have successfully used OpenROVs. The legal and ethical issues surrounding the use of small underwater robots (particularly with regard to interactions with marine mammals and in the transport of invasive species) also will be explored.

Trident in water

Trident in water

Andrew Thaler of OpenROV
 and Joey Maier of Polk State will present a demonstration on Openrov and Openrov Trident: Democratizing Exploration, Conservation, and Marine Science Through Low-Cost Open-Source Underwater Robots on Saturday, April 2nd at 1:30 PM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

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Time to Start Reading We Robot Papers!

All of the We Robot 2016 papers are now available for download from the Program Page — look for the colorful hyperlinks. If you’re coming, or if you are planning to follow along online, you will want to read as many of the papers as you can before the event. We Robot authors do not present their papers; instead we jump straight to the discussant, who summarizes the paper and then offers comments. The author(s) respond briefly, and then we turn it over to our amazing attendees for their questions and reactions. This makes for a much more substantive session, but it works better if you’ve read the paper in advance.

UPDATED: If you would prefer to download the papers all at once, here’s a zip file with all of the papers.
Second Update (3/28): There’s a new draft of the Asaro paper on the Program page, and in the zip file above.
Third Update (3/29): New draft of Gilbert-Zallone article.

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William D. Smart on ‘What do We Really Know About Robots and the Law?’

William D. Smart

William D. Smart

We Robot is a gloriously multi-disciplinary conference. Legal and policy scholars discuss current and future robots and robotics technologies, and offer sage advice about how to legislate them. Roboticists talk about current and future legal and policy structures, and hypothesize how these might interact with the underlying technology. Ideas flow back and forth, and we make concrete steps towards understanding how law, policy, and robotics interact, both today and in the years to come.

Or do we? How much do legal and policy scholars know about real robots, and the technology that goes into them? How well do roboticists understand the law and how it works? The frank answer to both of these questions is “not as much or as well as they should”.

This paper provides the results of a survey taken at We Robot 2013, designed to assess how well me know each others’ fields of expertise. We Robot participants were invited to answer a set of questions to determine how well they understood the basics of robotics technology and some of the legal issues surrounding it. Participants self-identified as either a roboticist, a legal scholar, a policy scholar, or “other” and gave some basic demographic information. The paper gives an analysis of the results of the survey, highlighting some interesting trends. Without giving the game away, none of us knows as much as we think we do, and there’s still a lot of work to be done to educate each other, and to really understand the basics of each other’s fields. This is, however, vital for the long-term success of both We Robot and the ideas on which it is founded.

In addition to presenting the results of the survey, the paper identifies some key areas where we can make progress in educating each other, and provide some concrete suggestions for how to do this. The ultimate goal of this paper is to scare everyone just a little bit, but then to provide a ray of hope for the future. If we know where our own shortcomings are, we can work to directly address them, and to make sure that, when we are caricaturing our colleagues’ areas of expertise, we are at least 80% right.

William D. Smart will present What do We Really Know About Robots and the Law? on Saturday, April 2nd at 4:30 PM with discussant Ian Kerr at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

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Helen Norton and Toni Massaro on ‘Siriously? Free Speech Rights for Artificial Intelligence’

Helen Norton

Helen Norton

Computers with communicative artificial intelligence (AI) are pushing First Amendment theory and doctrine in profound and novel ways. They are becoming increasingly self-directed and corporal in ways that may one day make it difficult to call the communication “ours” versus “theirs.” This, in turn, invites questions about whether the First Amendment ever will (or ever should) protect AI speech or speakers even absent a locatable and accountable human creator. The authors explain why current free speech theory and doctrine pose surprisingly few barriers to this counterintuitive result; their elasticity suggests that speaker human-ness no longer may be a logically essential part of the First Amendment calculus.

Toni Massaro

Toni Massaro

The authors also observe, however, that free speech theory and doctrine provide a basis for regulating, as well as protecting, the speech of nonhuman speakers to serve the interests of their human listeners should strong AI ever evolve to this point. Finally, we note that the futurist implications we describe are possible, but not inevitable. Moreover, contemplating these outcomes for AI speech may inspire rethinking of the free speech theory and doctrine that makes them plausible.

Helen Norton and Toni Massaro will present Siriously? Free Speech Rights for Artificial Intelligence on Saturday, April 2nd at 3:15 PM with discussant Margot E. Kaminski at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

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Peter Asaro on ‘Will #BlackLivesMatter to RoboCop?’

Peter Asaro

Peter Asaro

This paper examines the possible future application of robotics to policing on the assumption that these will be systems that are controlled by programmed computers, rather than cyborgs. In particular, this paper examines the legal and moral requirements for the use of force by police, and whether robotic systems of the foreseeable future could meet these requirements, or whether those laws may need to be revised in light of robotic technologies, as some have argued.

Beyond this, the paper considers the racial dimensions of the use of force by police, and how such automation might impact the discriminatory nature of police violence. Many people believe that technologies are politically neutral, and might expect a future RoboCop to be similarly neutral, and consequently to lack racial prejudice and bias. In this way, RoboCop might be seen as a technological solution to racist policing. Many scholars have argued that technologies embody the values of the society that produces them, and often amplify the power disparities and biases of that society. In this way, RoboCop might be seen as an even more powerful, dangerous and unaccountable embodiment of racist policing.

The paper proceeds by examining the problems of racist policing from a number of diverse perspectives. These include examining the national and international legal standards for the use of force by police, as well as the guidelines issued by UN Human Rights Council, ICRC, and Amnesty International, and the legal implications of designing robotic systems to use violent and lethal force, remotely or autonomously.

From another perspective, the paper will consider the ways in which digital technologies are not racially neutral, but can actually embody forms of racism by design, both intentionally and unintentionally. This includes simple forms such as automatic faucets which fail to recognize dark skinned hands,the intentional tuning of color film stock to give greater dynamic range to white faces at the expense of black faces, and the numerous challenges of adapting facial recognition technologies to racially diverse faces. In other words, how might automated technologies that are intended to treat everyone equal, fail to do so? And further, how might automated technologies be expected to make special considerations for particularly vulnerable populations? The paper also considers the challenges of recognizing individuals in need of special consideration during police encounters, such as the elderly, children, pregnant women, people experiencing health emergencies, the mentally ill, and the physically handicapped including the deaf, blind and those utilizing wheelchairs, canes, prosthetics and other medical aides and devices.

The paper also considers the systemic nature of racism. The automation of policing might fail to address systemic racism, even if it could be successful in eliminating racial bias in individual police encounters. In particular, it considers the likely applications of data-driven policing. Given the efficiency aims of automation, it seems likely that automated patrols would be shaped by data from previous police calls and encounters. As is already the case with human policing, robotic police will likely be deployed more heavily in the communities of racial minorities, and the poor and disenfranchised where they will generate more interactions, more arrests, and thus provide data to further justify greater robotic police presence in those communities. That is, automated policing could easily reproduce the racist effects of existing practices and its explicit and implicit forms of racism.

Finally, the paper reflects on the need for greater community involvement in establishing police use-of-force standards, as well as the enforcement of those standards, and other norms governing policing. Moreover, as policing becomes increasingly automated, through both data-driven and robotic technologies, it is increasingly important to involve communities in the design and adoption of technologies used to keep the peace in those communities. Failing to do so will only further increase an adversarial stance between communities and their police force.

Peter Asaro will present Will #BlackLivesMatter to RoboCop? on Saturday, April 2nd at 3:15 PM with discussant Mary Anne Franks at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

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Aaron Mannes on ‘Institutional Options for Robot Governance’

Aaron Mannes

Aaron Mannes

As robots change daily life and commerce, governments will also need to change in response to this new technological challenge. This paper examines the kinds of government institutions U.S. federal policy-makers will need to develop and implement policy for the revolution in robotics. (The institutions that will be established after the robot revolution to govern humanity will be discussed in a subsequent paper.)

Broadly, the American people will want their government to support research in robotics, regulate robotics, manage robotic crises (such as dangerous autonomous behavior), and help society adapt to the broader changes wrought by robotics. This paper, using the organizational theory and bureaucratic politics paradigms, provides a menu of institutional options for dealing with this emerging technology.

Aaron Mannes will present Institutional Options for Robot Governance on Saturday, April 2nd at 10:00 AM with discussant Harry Surden at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

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Aurelia Tamò and Christoph Lutz on ‘Privacy and Healthcare Robots – An ANT Analysis’

Aurelia Tamò

Aurelia Tamò

Artificial intelligence and robots reach higher and higher capacity levels every year and are increasingly prevalent. Robots are already heavily used in industrial settings, but increasingly also in healthcare, for service tasks, and in households. Social robots register our habits and attitudes, affecting our sense of intimacy, privacy, bonding and emotional support. Studies in the field of human robot interaction have shown that humans tend to anthropomorphize social robots, which substantially increases the pervasiveness of such technology. In addition, per definition robots possess real-life agency, i.e., they not only collect and process information, they also act upon it by physically reaching out into the world. This further increases their pervasiveness and creates the potential for physical damage. With such real-life agency comes an unprecedented potential for access to personal rooms and surveillance. Taken together and coupled with a lack of awareness how such technology works, these aspects threaten to endanger consumers’ privacy and to substantially limit their control of sensitive data (such as emotional states, health information and intimate relationships) when they interact with robots. Summed up, the privacy implications of social robots are far-reaching and concern both informational and physical privacy.

Christoph Lutz

Christoph Lutz

This article addresses the topic of healthcare robots and privacy. The choice of healthcare robots comes from the fact that they often deal with extremely sensitive information and very vulnerable population groups: elderly and/or severely ill individuals. In this sense, they present a “worst case scenario” for privacy, where potential privacy intrusions are especially severe. The authors use actor network theory (ANT) to shed light on the privacy implications of healthcare robots from a specific theoretical point of view. ANT is a descriptive, constructivist approach that takes into account the relationality of technology and the social and the agency of objects, concepts and ideas. It has been applied to complex technological innovations, such as e-health systems. The authors use some of the main concepts of ANT–actants, translations, tokens/quasi-objects, punctualization, obligatory passage point–to “map” the privacy ecosystem in robotic healthcare technology, thereby analyzing the complex interplay of robots and humans in that context.

Aurelia Tamò and Christoph Lutz will present Privacy and healthcare robots – An ANT analysis on Saturday, April 2nd at 8:30 AM with discussant Matt Beane at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

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We Robot Preliminary Program

Registration for We Robot 2016 is now open.  Please check the official We Robot 2016 Program for any changes to this preliminary program.

Thursday, March 31

Workshops

9:00am Check-in & breakfast

9:30am Juris Machina: Legal Aspects of Robotics
Organizer: Woody Hartzog, Cumberland School of Law at Samford University

11:00am Break

11:15am Electronic Love, Trust, & Abuse: Social Aspects of Robotics
Organizer: Kate Darling, Research Specialist at MIT Media Lab. Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Affiliate at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies

12:45pm Lunch

2:00pm “The Robot Revolution has been Rescheduled (until we can debug the sensors)”: Technical Aspects of Robotics
Organizer: William D. Smart, Robotics Program, Oregon State University

3:30pm Break

3:45pm Funding the Future: Financial Aspects of Robotics
Organizer: Dan Siciliano, Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford Law School

5:15pm Wrap up


Friday, April 1st

8:00am

Check-in and Breakfast

8:30am

Introductions

Welcome Remarks: Patricia White, University of Miami School of Law
Introductory Remarks and Introduction of Sponsors: A. Michael Froomkin, University of Miami School of Law, Program Chair

8:45am

Moral Crumple Zones: Cautionary Tales in Human Robot Interaction
Madeleine Elish, The Intelligence & Autonomy Initiative, Data & Society
Discussant: Rebecca Crootof, The Information Society Project, Yale Law School

10:00am Break

10:15am

Privacy in Human-Robot Interaction: Survey and Future Work
Matthew Rueben, Robotics Program, Oregon State University
William D. Smart, Robotics Program, Oregon State University
Discussant: Ashkan Soltani, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

11:30am Break

11:45am

How to Engage the Public on the Ethics and Governance of Lethal Autonomous Weapons
Jason Millar, Philosophy, Queen’s University
AJung Moon, Engineering, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
Discussant: Peter Asaro, School of Media Studies, The New School for Public Engagement, Stanford Law School, International Committee for Robot Arms Control

12:30pm Lunch

1:30pm

Demonstration: Legal and Ethical Implications for Robots in our Life
Olivier Guihelm, Aldebaran, SoftBank Robotics

3:45pm Break

3:00pm

Hot Topic: Autonomous Vehicles

Autonomous Vehicles, Predictability, and Law
Harry Surden, University of Colorado Law School
Connect Cars – Recent Legal developments
Françoise Gilbert,  Greenberg Traurig LLP, Palo Alto, California
Raffaele Zallone, IT Law, the Bocconi University, ITC Committee, the European Lawyers Association
Discussant: Dan Siciliano, Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford Law School

4:30pm

Robots In American Law
Ryan Calo, University of Washington School of Law
Discussant: A. Michael Froomkin, University of Miami School of Law, Program Chair

5:45pm

Poster Session & Reception

7:00pm Birds of a Feather Sessions@ Local restaurants


Saturday, April 2nd

8:00am

Registration and Breakfast

8:30am

Privacy and Healthcare Robots – An ANT analysis
Aurelia Tamo, The Chair for Information and Communication Law and Visiting Researcher, The Institute for Pervasive Computing, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Christoph Lutz, Institute for Media and Communications Management, University of St. Gallen
Discussant: Matt Beane, MIT Sloan School of Management

9:45am Break

10:00am

Institutional Options for Robot Governance
Dr. Aaron Mannes, Apex Data Analytics Engine, HSARPA Department of Homeland Security
Discussant: Harry Surden, University of Colorado Law School

11:15am Break

11:30am

Will #BlackLivesMatter to RoboCop?
Peter Asaro, School of Media Studies, The New School for Public Engagement, Stanford Law School, International Committee for Robot Arms Control
Discussant: Mary Anne Franks, University of Miami School of Law

12:15pm

Special Event: Autonomous Technologies and their Societal Impact
Raj Madhavan, Future Directions Committee, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers;
Founder & CEO, HumRobTech, LLC & Distinguished Visiting Professor of Robotics, Amrita
University, India.

12:30pm Lunch

1:30pm

Demonstration: Openrov And Openrov Trident: Democratizing Exploration, Conservation, And Marine Science Through Low-Cost Open-Source Underwater Robots
Andrew Thaler, OpenROV
David Land, OpenROV

3:00pm Break

3:15pm

Siriously? Free Speech Rights for Artificial Intelligence
Helen Norton, University of Colorado School of Law
Toni Massaro, University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law
Discussant: Margot E. Kaminski, Ohio State University

4:15pm Break

4:30pm

What do We Really Know About Robots and the Law?
William D. Smart, Robotics Program, Oregon State University
Discussant: Ian Kerr, University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Medicine, and Department of Philosophy.

5:15pm

Final Remarks: A. Michael Froomkin, University of Miami School of Law


All events April 1-2 at University of Miami Newman Alumni Center except Birds of a Feather Sessions.

Workshops March 31 will be held at the University of Miami School of Law.

You can register just for the main event or the conference and the workshops.

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