Robot Law

by Ryan Calo (Editor), A. Michael Froomkin (Editor), Ian Kerr (Editor)

Like the Internet before it, robotics is a socially and economically transformative technology. Robot Law explores how the increasing sophistication of robots and their widespread deployment into hospitals, public spaces, and battlefields requires rethinking of a wide variety of philosophical and public policy issues, including how this technology interacts with existing legal regimes, and thus may inspire changes in policy and in law. This volume collects the efforts of a diverse group of scholars who each, in their own way, has worked to overcome barriers in order to facilitate necessary and timely discussions of a technology in its infancy. Identifying controversial legal, ethical, and philosophical problems, the authors reveal how issues surrounding robotics and regulation are more complicated than engineers could have anticipated, and just how much definitional and applied work remains to be done. This groundbreaking examination of a brand-new reality will be of interest and of use to a variety of groups as the authors include engineers, ethicists, lawyers, roboticists, philosophers, and serving military. Contributors P. Asaro, C. Bassani, E. Calisgan, R. Calo, G. Conti, D.M. Cooper, G. Conti, E.A. Croft, K. Darling, F. Ferreira, A.M. Froomkin, S. Gutiu, W. Hartzog, F.P. Hubbard, C.E.A. Karnow, I. Kerr, D. Larkin, J. Millar, A. Moon, J. Nelson, F. Operto, N.M. Richards, L.A. Shay, W.D. Smart, B.W. Smith, K. Szilagyi, K. Thomasen, H.F.M. Van der Loos, G. Veruggio

Genres: Law, Nonfiction

424 pages, Hardcover

Published February 18, 2016

Reviews

[William Emery · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a certain hubris to naming a book about robot law Robot Law, but it's justified in this case. In scholarly articles on topics ranging from the malpractice implications of expert robots to the moral implications of "sexbots," Robot Law raises many of the big questions in this nascent field. Although the book is short on actual answers, the essays do a great job creating frameworks and vocabularies that will make the process of finding those answers more straightforward.