While no country currently has a law to regulate the rise of robots, a resolution passed yesterday by the European parliament calls for EU-wide legislation in this field.
According to the resolution, such legislation should encompass, in particular, liability for the actions of robots including self-driving cars, and an ethical framework for robot development and deployment.
However, European lawmakers rejected a proposal to impose a so-called robot tax on owners to fund support for or retraining of workers put out of a job by robots.
“The EU needs to take the lead on setting these standards, so as not to be forced to follow those set by third countries,” European lawmakers believe.
In Russia, too, robot laws are under consideration. Draft laws regulating relations between robots and humans could be adopted “across the board” as early as 2022, said Vyacheslav Volodin, Russian parliament (Duma) speaker on Feb. 12 during an official visit to the semi-autonomous central Russian republic of Tatarstan.
The world will soon face demands for regulation in the field of robotics, and Russia should take the lead in this legislation, Volodin added. The speaker also invited students and professors to participate in drawing up laws on robots.
“We believe that the development of the digital economy requires legislative support,” he said.
The Duma speaker also announced the creation of a council for legislative support of the digital economy reported by RBC. This council will comprise IT-industry experts and MPs.
A businessman and a novelist turned lawmakers?
In December 2016, Dmitry Grishin, chairman of Mail.ru Group and founder of investment fund Grishin Robotics, proposed a draft law on robots, the Vedomosti business daily reported at the time.
Among other things, Grishin’s draft law outlined which robots could present a danger to humans and who would be responsible for their actions. There are four scenarios in which a robot or its actions would be considered a crime: The creation of a killer robot specifically designed to commit a crime; deactivation of software and hardware that block the possibility of causing harm to humans; the construction of a robot capable of causing harm to humans; and building a robot that is incapable of ‘understanding’ that it can be used to cause harm to humans. But the question remains: Which robots and by what criteria could be classified as a source of high risk.
The draft law also proposed setting up a register of robots. Grishin said that the laws of robotics formulated by Russian-born American sci-fi novelist Isaac Asimov could be relevant in the practical application of the law.
Asimov formulated three laws of robotics. The first one is that a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. The second is that a robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. And the third: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
This story refers to content initially published by the Reuters news agency and Russia Beyond The Headlines.
