Bryant Walker Smith
Bryant Walker Smith is an assistant professor in the School of Law and (by courtesy) in the School of Engineering at the University of South Carolina.
Robots are already in widespread use in manufacturing and warfare. You see them increasingly in hospitals, warehouses, even homes. The mainstreaming of robotics presents a number of interesting puzzles for administrative, tort, and other areas of the law.
CIS has emerged as a national leader in exploring the intersection of law and robotics. Our staff has published on a variety of topics, including autonomous driving, the domestic use of drones, robotics and privacy, and liability for personal robots. We have held several events around artificial intelligence and robotics, including the annual Robot Block Party for National Robotics Week that draws thousands of visitors.
Bryant Walker Smith is an assistant professor in the School of Law and (by courtesy) in the School of Engineering at the University of South Carolina.
Dr. Asaro is Assistant Professor in the School of Media Studies at the New School in New York City. He is the co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, and has written 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, aerial drones and autonomous vehicles.
Ryan Calo is an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law and a former research director at CIS. A nationally recognized expert in law and emerging technology, Ryan's work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Wired Magazine, and other news outlets. Ryan serves on several advisory committees, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Future of Privacy Forum.
Patrick Lin is the director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group, based at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where he is also an associate philosophy professor. He has published several books and papers in the field of technology ethics, especially with respect to nanotechnology, human enhancement, robotics, cyberwarfare, space exploration, and other areas. He teaches courses in ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of technology, and philosophy of law. Dr.
By Bryant Walker Smith on September 19, 2016 at 5:00 pm
By Bryant Walker Smith on September 6, 2016 at 7:16 pm
By Bryant Walker Smith on March 22, 2016 at 9:01 am
My recently completed article presents steps that governments can take now to encourage the development, deployment, and use of automated road vehicles. After providing technical and legal context, it describes key administrative, legal, and community strategies. It concludes by urging policymakers to facilitate automated driving in part by expecting more from today’s drivers and vehicles.
By Bryant Walker Smith on January 10, 2016 at 9:03 am
In the spirit of the New Year, and especially in the wake of California's draft rules for the (theoretical) operation of automated motor vehicles, I offer two resolutions for any serious developer of an automated driving (or flying) system. Such a developer should:
Palo Alto lawmakers have proposed legislation granting the community greater control over police surveillance — including the Police Department’s purchase and use of equipment such as drones, license plate readers and social media monitoring software. Palo Alto and 10 other cities around the country that have proposed similar laws are part of a movement to bring the community and elected representatives into decisions by local police to acquire such powerful and invasive surveillance technologies. We all should urge our own elected representatives to take similar steps.
At the outset, it's not clear to me what Silicon Valley is and isn't — or why that matters. Companies like Google are often contrasted with companies like General Motors, and yet, according to an automotive industry group, automakers spend over $100 billion every year on research and development worldwide. R&D is a form of tech innovation. Energy companies, pharmaceutical firms and financial institutions are also technological powerhouses. Innovation is central to telecommunications, defense and health care.
With the recent announcement, the US Department of Transportation is enthusiastically embracing automated driving. It’s saying that self-driving vehicles are coming in some form (or many forms) and that the agency can play a role not only in supervising but also in assisting this transportation transformation. The DOT is recognizing the wide range of relevant technologies, applications, and business models and is striving to address them more quickly and flexibly through its wide range of prospective and retrospective regulatory tools.
"There are still no official plans for the public to test nuTonomy's vehicles in Boston. The cars will still be supervised by a "research driver," so they are far from "driverless," said Bryant Walker Smith, professor at the University of South Carolina, and an expert on the legal aspects of self-driving vehicles. And testing on public roads has been happening for years—Google has been doing it since 2009.
"Such is the hype. But for every tech company with its head in the clouds, there are problems to bring them back down to earth. “There are big technical challenges,” says Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington. “There’s a bunch of PhD theses that need to be completed before you can build a drone to autonomously police an area, find intruders, and use facial recognition to know who is meant to be there. Plus, having these things stay aloft beyond a few minutes is non-trivial.”"
"Bryant Walker Smith, assistant professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law and (by courtesy) the School of Engineering, and Affiliate Scholar, Center of Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, argues that AVs and many other products are now connected to their manufacturers in ways that permit the manufacturers to maintain "information, access and control over the products, product users and product uses" in ways that can "expand the legal obligations and liabilities of automotive companies toward people harmed by their products."
"“These are decisions that need to be thought about or programmed in advance,” said Patrick Lin, director of the Ethics and Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University. “Either way leads to problems.” In either case, you’re targeting a vehicle class through no fault of its own."
U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, will convene a hearing on Wednesday, November 16, 2016, at 3:00 p.m. entitled “Exploring Augmented Reality.” The hearing will examine the emergence, benefits, and implications of augmented reality technologies. Unlike virtual reality that creates a wholly simulated reality, augmented reality attempts to superimpose images and visual data on the physical world in an intuitive way.
Witnesses:
• Mr. Brian Blau, Research Vice President, Gartner
Attendees will hear leading speakers, participate in interactive breakout sessions, and network with key innovators in this exciting field. Don't miss what's in store for the Automated Vehicles Symposium 2016.
Affiliate Scholars Bryant Walker Smith and Patrick Lin are confirmed speakers.
For more information, visit the conference website.
The University of Washington School of Law is delighted to announce a public workshop on the law and policy of artificial intelligence, co-hosted by the White House and UW’s Tech Policy Lab. The event places leading artificial intelligence experts from academia and industry in conversation with government officials interested in developing a wise and effective policy framework for this increasingly important technology. The event is free and open to the public but requires registration. -
For more information and to register visit the event website.
Professor Patrick Lin discusses key ethical, legal, and policy challenges in cyberwarfare. This event is part of the “IT, Ethics, and Law” lecture series, co-sponsored by the High Tech Law Institute.
November 2, 2016
Peter Asaro (assistant professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School) and S. Matthew Liao (director of the Center for Bioethics at New York University) talk to Live Science's Denise Chow and Space.com's Tariq Malik about the ethics of AI.
October 15, 2016
On October 14-15, 2016, the NYU Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness in conjunction with the NYU Center for Bioethics hosted a conference on “The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence”.
August 10, 2016
The ABA Annual Conference may not have been a lot of fun for, say, an institution on the cusp of a DOE smackdown, but as a member of the press — marked with a bright yellow badge in case (and the “yellow journalism” epithet did not go unnoticed) — it’s a pretty good time. With my friends from the LegalTalk Network, producers of Thinking Like A Lawyer, I had the opportunity to chat with experts as they finished their panel discussions.
July 11, 2016
Hours after gunman Micah Johnson ambushed police officers in downtown Dallas, he was killed by a bomb strapped on a police robot. Robots in the past have stopped a lot of dangerous situations, but using a robot to kill - that was a first for a domestic police force. Kris Van Cleave reports on the ethical questions about the use of robots to kill suspects.
Affiliate Scholar Peter Asaro is interviewed.