Chapter 1 로봇이 잘못되면?

Already mankind has begun to embrace the "로봇 사회".” In 2005 the government of South Korea announced its intention to have a robot in every household by 2020. And the Japanese Robot Association predicts that Next Generation Robots will generate up to $ 65 billion of economic activity by 2025. Also in Japan efforts have been under way for some time to ensure that, before long, elderly members of the population will routinely have robots to take care of them. Meanwhile, at many universities and other research centres, robots of just about every flavour are a hot topic.

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Clearly robots will soon be assisting us in many different aspects of our lives, becoming our partners in various practical and companionable ways and entertaining us. An early example in the field of entertainment was a ballroom dancer robot that was unveiled in 2005 at the World Expo in Japan. It did not have usable legs but instead moved on three wheels.

Let us consider the following scenario, perhaps ten years from now, when dancing robots do have moveable legs and possess the skills for a variety of dance steps, such as waltz, foxtrot, rumba, …​ One evening a young lady named Laura is at a dance, partnering such a robot. The band strikes up with the music for a cha cha cha but performs it so badly that the robot mistakes the music for a tango. So Laura and her robot partner are holding each other but dancing at cross purposes, and very soon they fall over. The robot lands on top of Laura and, being quite heavy, breaks both of her legs. Laura’s father is furious, and calls his lawyers, telling them to commence legal proceedings immediately and “throw the book at them.”

But at whom should his lawyers throw the book? Should it be the dance hall, or the online store that sold the robot to the dance hall, or the manufac- turer of the robot, or the robot’s designers, or should it be the independent software house that programmed the robot’s tune recognition software, or the band leader, or even the whole band of musicians for playing the cha cha cha so badly?

Some months later the trial opens with all of these as defendants. Expert witnesses are called - experts on everything from robot software to motion sensor engineers to the principals of dance music academies. What do you think would be the result of the trial? I’ll tell you - the lawyers do very nicely thank you.

As technology advances, the proliferation of robots and their applications will take place in parallel with increases in their complexity. One of the dis- advantages of those increases will be a corresponding increase in the number of robot accidents and wrongdoings. How will legal systems be able to cope with all the resulting court cases? In fact, will they be able to cope? The answer, surely, is “No.”

In this chapter, I am going to addresses the questions: What should hap- pen when something goes wrong? Who, or what, is responsible? And above all, how best should society deal with an ever-increasing number of robot accidents. All developed countries will be faced with these problems, and all countries need to adopt legally and ethically sound approaches to finding solutions to them.

1.2 BLAME THE ROBOT?

Even though a robot is a man-made object, one superficially reasonable way to apportion blame for a robot accident or wrong doing would be to blame the robot itself. Many people support this idea because robots are autonomous.

I shall discuss three possible approaches to this particular argument:

  1. A robot should be regarded as a quasi-person; (사람에 준하는)

  2. A robot should be regarded as a quasi-animal; and (동물에 준하는)

  3. A robot should be regarded as neither, but simply as a product,a manmade object, period. (상품으로)

1.2.1 The Robot as a Quasi-Person

As computer software, and therefore robots, gain in intelligence, many of us will come to accept that their mental capabilities have a human-like quality. Leon Wein argues that a robot’s capacity to make decisions and act on them enables them to:

"operate in a manner identical to that of humans …​ society may have no choice but to accept machines as “legal persons” with rights as well as duties."

These duties will include the obligation to act in a manner that would be considered reasonable if it were human behaviour. The same obligation ap- plies to corporations, which, despite not being human, have legal rights and responsibilities and can be punished for their transgressions and their negli- gence. This possibility, punishing corporations, points the way to the concept of punishing robots, by fining them for example.

1.2.2 The Robot as a Quasi-Animal

Some researchers argue that because robots, like animals, are autonomous, society can justify blaming robots for their accidents.

For the purposes of attributing legal responsibility for accidents and wrongdoings, the analogy of robots as domesticated animals is a concept that has gained a fair measure of support in the recent literature. Richard Kel- ley and his colleagues at the University of Nevada draw an analogy between the different breeds of dogs and the different functions performed by robots.

For example, a Roomba vacuum cleaner robot is analogous to a breed of dog that is largely harmless, but an unmanned aircraft drone, especially if it is armed, is analogous to a dangerous breed. And for “dangerous” robots Kelly