Robot Law

^{The Legal Frameworks Surrounding the Rise of Artificial Intelligence and their Economic Consequences}

^{I looked at the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and its connection to the rise of capitalism, the labor movement, and fears of technological unemployment in my previous piece, Raging Against the Machines. In this piece, I continue that analysis by connecting the rise of artificial intelligence to American intellectual property law. I also discuss universal basic income and the future of work.}

^{The full essay, "Will Robots Want to Vote? An Investigation into the Implications of Artificial Intelligence for Liberty and Democracy," was written as part of a fellowship for The Fund for American Studies Robert Novak Journalism Program. For an introduction to the premise of the project, please read my speech, Will Robots Want to Vote? For an introductory summary to the final essay, please read, This will begin to make things right. The project is presented as a multi-part series. This piece is Part 4, and concludes the first section. For Parts 1 and 2, please read, Rethinking Artificial Intelligence, and The Rise of the Machines Has Already Happened.}

^{If you liked this post, please consider sharing, commenting, and upvoting. Thank you in advance. - Josh}

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^{Est. Reading Time: 7:30 min}

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^{Image Credit/Source: John Trumbull | License: Public Domain}

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History of growth

The reason why intellectual property laws are important to the development of A.I. is two-fold: First, the intellectual property rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the first patent act were critical to the conditions that set the stage for the American Industrial Revolution to begin in the early 19th century.

The Founding Fathers were men of the Enlightenment; holding scientific discovery, reason, and invention in such high esteem that in the Constitution they gave Congress the power “to promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

The Founders did not invent intellectual property rights; they find their roots in English common law. But in their essay, Liberty of Contract and the Free Market Foundations of Intellectual Property, Randolph May, president of the Free State Foundation, and Seth Cooper, senior fellow at the Free State Foundation, make the case that the Founders understood that the federal protection of IP rights to be essential for the explosion of invention and interstate commerce they sought to foster. The individual states had previously held the power under the Articles of Confederation to issue copyrights and patents to creators.

“Another important consequence of the Constitution’s policy favoring uniform federal laws for securing copyrights and patent rights was that it restrained states from directly regulating in those areas pursuant to states’ general jurisdiction or ”police powers,“ said May and Cooper.

Scientific discovery and invention are as foundational to the republic as are the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

A little more than a year after the Constitution took effect in 1789, the Patent Act of 1790 and the Copyright Act of 1790 were among the first 10 laws Congress passed under the new government, even preceding the ratification of the Bill of Rights in December 1791.

Peter Andreas, a professor of political science and international studies at Brown University, wrote in his book, Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, that the lack of IP protections for foreigner inventors in the original Patent Act encouraged a policy of “state-sponsored theft and smuggling.”

“In practice, this meant one could steal a foreign invention, smuggle it to the U.S. and develop it for domestic commercial applications without fear of legal reprisal,” said Andreas.

The prime example of this is Samuel Slater, whom President Andrew Jackson considered the “Father of the American Industrial Revolution, and Francis Cabot Lowell. Both men memorized the designs of English textile mills and brought their knowledge to the U.S. where they then built businesses around the designs they stole.

And second, legal and legislative battles over hardware and software patents and copyrights have raged with the rise of personal computers, mobile devices, and social networking technology, all of which make up the basic technologies that consumers use to interact with A.I. today.

As I reported in October 2016 for Watchdog.org, the Commerce Department produced a study showing that in 2014 not only were IP-intensive industries responsible for upwards of 45.5 million of American jobs, they also accounted for about 38.2 percent of the nation’s total gross domestic product ($6.6 trillion).

The intellectual property rights that developed in the political systems birthed during the Industrial Revolution support designers, artists, inventors, and related supply-chain jobs, including the manufacturing, sale, and distribution of the products and services protected by I.P. laws.

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^{Title: | Image Credit/Source: U.S. Air Force photo/Lt Col Leslie Pratt | License: Public Domain}

The Law

If artificial intelligence is just a fancy name for computer software, the history of laws dealing with A.I. is ultimately the history of computer law, particularly intellectual property rights and privacy rights, and labor and employment law.

But the rise of drone warfare and self-driving car research is forcing policymakers and lawmakers to also consider A.I.’s impact on the laws of war and transportation law. Legal minds are also having to consider whether A.I. programs that compose creative works can legally own the copyrights to their creations and receive royalties.

In the case of self-driving cars, the National Conference of State Legislatures reported in late February that since 2012, “at least 34 states and D.C. have considered legislation related to autonomous vehicles.”

“Eleven states—Alabama, California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia—and Washington D.C. have passed legislation related to autonomous vehicles,“ said the NCSL.

But the regulatory concerns go beyond whether an A.I. vehicle obeys the rules of the road; determining culpability is also an uncharted legal and ethical dilemma. For example, who is responsible if a self-driving car causes a fatal accident? The car owner? Its manufacturer? The individual software programmer? These are just a few of the legal and policy considerations that await us in the future.

In November 2016, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, chaired Congress’ first hearing on artificial intelligence, which featured industry and academic experts. The White House under the Obama administration also held a series of conferences throughout 2016 on the implications of A.I. and published several reports on the subject.

“We are living in the dawn of artificial intelligence, and it is incumbent that Congress and this subcommittee begin to learn about the vast implications of this emerging technology to ensure that the United States remains a global leader throughout the 21st century,” said Cruz.

And, as previously suggested, while concerns over killer robots serve as a valuable metaphor for real world economic issues, autonomous weapons systems, i.e., military drones that do not require a human operator to take lethal action against a target, present a very real danger to individuals.

More than 3,000 artificial intelligence and robotics researchers from around the world — including researchers at Stanford, Harvard, Microsoft Research, Google DeepMind, Facebook, and Yahoo — have signed an open letter calling for an international ban on autonomous weapons systems and said that they have no interest in participating in a global arms race to build A.I. weapons.

Other signatories also include high profile names such as Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

“Starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control,” they said.

The efficacy of a ban on these kinds of weapons systems is doubtful, however, given that banned weapons systems, such as chemical and nuclear weapons, still manage to find their way into the wrong hands.

But in December 2016, the United Nation’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons agreed to formalize what might ultimately result in an international ban on lethal autonomous weapons systems.

The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, an international non-governmental organization coalition, reported China was the first permanent member of the U.N. Security Council to support an international law on the matter. France, U.K., and the U.S. supported the formation of a governmental expert working group, proposing to share best practices and promote transparency.

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^{Title: "Striking dressmakers, with placards demanding wage hikes, take a break in a diner." (1955)| Image Credit/Source: unknown/Kheel Center | License: (CC BY 2.0)}

Income

Increased calls for a universal basic income (UBI) have also resounded ever louder over the past couple of years as A.I. has come to the fore of the public eye.

The basic idea of a UBI is that every adult would receive a monthly check from the government, regardless of income level, to do with as they please. People would have the liberty to pursue meaningful work or leisure without the additional stress of trying to make ends meet since there would also be no limit on how much a person can earn while receiving a UBI payment.

This would replace existing entitlements and welfare programs, and since it would be cash, proponents say it is arguably more humane and dignified than current programs that place the government in the role of a nanny and its employees into spies against their fellow citizens.

A February 2017 report by the Heritage Foundation on entitlement spending showed that in 2016, federal spending on social security and health care was 53 percent of the federal budget, and is expected to grow another 6 percent over the next 10 years.

Bill Gates said in February 2017 that in the coming years governments should tax the robot workers, echoing UBI proposals that would shift the tax burden from individual income taxes and payroll taxes to the companies and their robots, as well as to consumption, i.e., higher sales taxes. UBI has earned the support of conservatives and libertarians, such as economist Charles Murray, to people on the left, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt.

On the other hand, while UBI might seem like an attractive short term solution to a potentially catastrophic problem, there's no guarantee politicians would resist the urge to continually raise taxes, engage in careless spending, and erode civil liberties. If the population were to turn into government dependents, there might be less incentive for lawmakers to listen to them.

With a demand for a more responsive government accountable to its citizens and not rich lobbyists in Washington, populist worries over the rise of an American oligarchy and income inequality are high. This is only a recipe for further unrest. Whatever the future holds, it could very well be less idyllic than its advocates would have us believe.

The education system will need to prepare people for a life of entrepreneurship as opposed to a life of employment. The rise of the Internet and massive online open courses (MOOCs) such as Coursera and Udacity have opened access to educational tools that will help mitigate some of the negative aspects of this potential future.

On the other hand, labor groups might lobby for more regulations and taxes on companies that choose to prioritize automated labor over human labor, which could also slow the transition to a fully automated workforce – a concern the National Intelligence Council (NIC) expressed in its “Global Trends: Paradoxes of Progress” report published in January 2017. The NIC reports to the head of the U.S. intelligence community, the Director of National Intelligence, on the challenges faced by the intelligence community.

"The rate of advances may lead to short-term dislocations in some sectors, but fears of widespread displacement have proven unfounded,” said the NIC in its report. “Nonetheless, the fears may lead some government leaders and publics to call for slowing the use of new technology to protect jobs, potentially slowing gains.”

A highly-cited study published in 2013 by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne estimated that 47 percent of American workers were at risk of losing their job to software automation, particularly in the administrative, logistics, transportation, and service industries.

The McKinsey Global Institute published a more nuanced outlook at the beginning of the year, stating that currently available automation technology could cut work time in about half, only 5 percent of jobs are capable of being fully automated, and the transition would take decades to complete.

The high cost of living in certain areas of the country is also fueling a push by unions to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Small business owners fear they will be hurt by the new laws, such as either having to lay off employees or close-up shop entirely, while policy advocates argue that such fears are unfounded.

For fast food franchises, the $15 an hour minimum wage movement provided political cover for plans at the corporate level to move towards further automation; a plan companies like McDonald’s have already been instituting in Europe, by replacing counter workers with self-service kiosks. Wendy’s has responded to the new laws with its own plans to install 1,000 self-service kiosks at its restaurants across the U.S. by the end of the year.

Self-service kiosks have been a feature of many American retail and grocery stores for a while, such as Target and Walmart, and ATM machines have replaced many bank tellers and given banks a cost-effective way to extend their footprint.

That being said, changes in technology change labor demands. Demand for chimney sweeps, for example, might not be the same as it was in Charles Dickens’ time, but the natural gas miner, solar panel manufacturer, and the HVAC technician did not exist then either.

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Thank you for reading,

- Josh

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^{Josh Peterson is a 2016 Robert Novak Journalism Program Fellow and a writer living in Denver, CO. Follow Josh on Steemit and Twitter. Keybase for secure chat. PGP Fingerprint: 4507 3000 1A40 2691 DAB8 ED65 A3EA 3629 73FD B7FF. BTC: 14LE7Jv4NZXgtWq876RUdSUVKfZs7rcnzf}

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Further Reading

• ^{"Automation and anxiety." The Economist. June 25, 2016. Accessed November 6, 2017. https://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21700758-will-smarter-machines-cause-mass-unemployment-automation-and-anxiety}
• ^{Bond, Toby. "How Artificial Intelligence is set to disrupt our legal framework for Intellectual Property rights." IPWatchdog. June 18, 2017. Accessed November 6, 2017. http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/06/18/artificial-intelligence-disrupt-legal-framework-intellectual-property-rights/id=84319/}
• ^{McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen. "The Myth of Technological Unemployment." Reason.com. July 11, 2017. Accessed November 6, 2017. https://reason.com/archives/2017/07/11/the-myth-of-technological-unem}
• ^{Webster, Simon. "The AI Intellectual Property Debate." CPA Global. February 7, 2017. Accessed November 6, 2017. https://www.cpaglobal.com/cpa-global-blog/blog/ai-intellectual-property-debate}

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Related Posts by Josh Peterson

• ^{"Raging Against the Machines." Steemit. October 27, 2017. Accessed November 2, 2017. https://steemit.com/artificial-intelligence/@joshpeterson/raging-against-the-machines}
• ^{"The Rise of the Machines Has Already Happened." Steemit. October 25, 2017. Accesed November 6, 2017. https://steemit.com/artificial-intelligence/@joshpeterson/the-rise-of-the-machines-as-a-historical-metaphor}
• ^{"Rethinking Artificial Intelligence." Steemit. October 22, 2017. Accessed October 24, 2017. https://steemit.com/artificial-intelligence/@joshpeterson/rethinking-artificial-intelligence}
• ^{"This will begin to make things right." Steemit. October 22, 2017. Accessed October 22, 2017. https://steemit.com/writing/@joshpeterson/this-will-begin-to-make-things-right.}
• ^{"Will Robots Want to Vote?" Steemit. October 19, 2017. Accessed October 22, 2017. https://steemit.com/artificial-intelligence/@joshpeterson/will-robots-want-to-vote.}

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