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Introduction to the Special Issue on the Man and the Machine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Thomas Burri
Affiliation:
International and European law
Isabelle Wildhaber
Affiliation:
Business and Labour Law, both at the University of St. Gallen (HSG)

Extract

This special issue assembles five articles ensuing from a conference on “The Man and the Machine: When Systems Take Decisions Autonomously”, which took place on June 26 and 27, 2015, at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

The aim of the conference was to explore the broader implications of artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomous robots and vehicles. Alphabet's Deep Mind is just one example about Whom we know, at least a little, and who, we are told, will be good. Autonomous vehicles are also about to enter the market and our phones have begun to verbalize at us. Private drones are being regulated by the US Federal Aviation Administration. The five papers in this special issue address some of the legal issues the broader development raises.

The first article is on “The Implications of Modern Business-Entity Law for the Regulation of Autonomous Systems” and is written by Shawn Bayern.

Type
Special Issue on the Man and the Machine
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016

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References

1 Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, ‘Inventive artificial intelligence will make all of us better’, Time, 28 December 2015, p. 20.

2 Cecilia Kang, ‘Drone Registration Rules Are Announced by F.A.A.’, 14 December 2015 (<http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/technology/drone-registration-rules-are-announced-by-faa.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0&referer=http://m.facebook.com>, last visit: 13 June 2016).

3 The conference “The Man and the Machine” was interdisciplinary by design. The call for papers that was issued in the fall 2014 was successful in attracting papers from various backgrounds of research from all over the world. However, as organizers, we refrained from pushing the interdisciplinary thrust right through to the publication, for when it comes to publishing authors are often bound to serve their disciplinary audiences. As a substitute we mention these papers which are (about to be) published now here: Anderson, Michael and Anderson, Susan Leigh, “Towards Ensuring Ethical Behaviour from Autonomous Systems: A Case–Supported Principle–Based Paradigm”, 42 Industrial Robot: An International Journal 4, pp. 324331 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kate Darling, “‘Who's Johnny?’ Anthrophomorphic Framing in Human–Robot Interaction, Integration, and Policy”, forthcoming in Robot Ethics 2.0, Patrick Lin, George Bekey, Keith Abney, and Ryan Jenkins (eds), MIT Press; Sahlil K. Mehra, “Anti–Trust and the Robo–Seller: Competition in the Time of Algorithms”, forthcoming in 100 Minnesota Law Review; James I. Walsh, “Lethal Autonomous Weapons and Responsibility Attribution”, published as “Political Accountability and Autonomous Weapons” in 2015 Research and Politics October–December, pp. 1-6. Four more papers were presented which stood at an earlier stage of research. 4 The article is published concomitantly in the Stanford Technology Law Review.

4 The article is published concomitantly in the Stanford Technology Law Review.

5 Erica Palmerini, Federico Azzarri, Fiorella Battaglia, et al., “Guidelines on Regulating Robotics”, 22 September 2014, available on the internet at: http://www.robolaw.eu.