How To Change U.S. Laws To Promote Robotics 118
An anonymous reader writes "A law professor says the U.S. could fall behind in the robotics race if we don't change product liability law. A new op-ed over at Mashable expands upon this: Yet for all its momentum, robotics is at a crossroads. The industry faces a choice — one that you see again and again with transformative technologies. Will this technology essentially be closed, or will it be open? ... What does it mean for robotics to be closed? Resembling any contemporary appliance, they are designed to perform a set task. They run proprietary software and are no more amenable to casual tinkering than a dishwasher. Open robots are just the opposite. By definition, they invite contribution. It has no predetermined function, runs third-party or even open-source software, and can be physically altered and extended without compromising performance. Consumer robotics started off closed, which helps to explain why it has moved so slowly."
robotics primary purpose (Score:2, Interesting)
the primary purpose and largest market for robotics will be for weapons. It will thus of course be mostly a closed-source system. You're either on the gravy train of the military-industrial complex or you're ballast under the tracks
Change laws to promote robotics (Score:4, Interesting)
AFAIK the US congress never passed the "Three Laws of Robotics" in the first place.
Maybe they should
And while we are talking about Asimov, maybe they should put some money into researching Thiotimoline
Re:robotics primary purpose (Score:4, Interesting)
None of this is really what the article is about, though. The thesis is simply that manufacturers of open robotics platforms (which are out there right now) should not be legally responsible for what people do with those platforms. The argument is that making them liable will reduce the pace of innovation.
But again, this is a non-issue.
You buy a Chainsaw from direct from the manufacturer, and that manufacturer is in no way responsible when you murder someone and chop them up with the saw to dispose of the body. Anti-Gun people have been routinely rebuffed by the courts when trying to sue gun manufacturers because someone used their products to commit murder. Nobody holds an automaker responsible when someone intentionally uses their vehicles to commit crimes.
The law and the courts are already pretty good at affixing blame, and in spite of the deep pocket horror stories, these tactics of going after the up-stream manufacturer virtually never work in the real world.