Fifteen Eighty Four

What We Discuss in the Handbook

In this century there will be a continuing and even accelerating trend towards increased levels of intelligence embedded within the entities we interact with. Remarkably, it is possible that by mid-century we will even witness a point in time when we reach artificial general intelligence only to be surpassed by artificial super intelligence. If this happens, as many predict it will, we will be less intelligent than the technology we interact with! Super intelligence explosion or not, we are creating technologies that understand our speech, recognize our faces, detect our emotions, expresses emotions themselves, express personalities, and display a wide range of social skills and characteristics that can only be described as more human-like, than machine-like. Our intelligent machines are becoming more than a tool for our use but a partner and social entity in our lives. Against this backdrop, it is human nature, seemingly hard-wired into our very being, that we anthropomorphize, react to, and treat technology as we do other humans. In fact, it is the interaction with a technology that is increasing in intelligence and at an exponential rate that we address in The Cambridge Handbook of the Law, Policy, and Regulation for Human–Robot Interaction.  

A major thread running through the Handbook is the idea that while the robots we are building are becoming increasingly smart and equipped with human-like sensors to perceive the world, use machine learning algorithms to understand the world, and display social skills, it is the interaction between humans and robots that we need to focus our attention on from a law, policy, and regulatory perspective. A particular type of technology which can be described as an embodied form of artificial intelligence is a robot, and particularly a humanoid robot.  Not only has research shown that we treat humanoid robots as we do other people, but we may even discriminate against them and show biases toward them, basically mimicking the acts of discrimination and biases that occur in human society. And remarkably, we even attribute a sense of mental agency to humanoid robots; that is, we react to them as if they had a mind. As robots become smarter and more human-like in behavior and appearance, significant issues of law, policy, and regulations have been raised. To address these pressing issues, The Cambridge Handbook of the Law, Policy, and Regulation for Human–Robot Interaction consists of 46 chapters from an international group of scholars discussing not only issues of law and policy for human-robot interaction, but how we currently interact with and experience robots in social and work settings. With increasingly smart robots entering society, the handbook also discusses issues of ethics involved in human-robot interaction, and importantly, includes a discussion of where humanity may be headed in an age of increasingly smart robots.

The Scope of Our Coverage

The Cambridge Handbook of the Law, Policy, and Regulation for Human–Robot Interaction is organized into four parts. The first part consists of eight chapters and focuses on providing a broad introduction to the law, policy, and regulations which apply to human-robot interaction. First, the editors introduce the topic, followed by topics such as the anthropomorphism of robots, telerobotics and human-robot interaction, issues of trust for robots, regulating robots in public spaces, creating oversight boards to regulate robots, and other introductory issues and fundamental issues. The second part, with 10 chapters, covers issues and concerns that involve human-robot interaction and discusses important questions such as whether AI entities should have legal person rights, how family law is implicated by emotional attachments to robots, the design of social robots, and critical next steps for human-robot interaction. Part Three, containing 14 chapters, discusses issues of ethics, culture, and values that are impacted by human-robot interaction.  In this section, the contributors discuss expressive robots, intercultural issues, ethical issues which are raised when robots are used in religious settings, the use of robots for long-term assistance, moral issues involved in interacting with robots, and whether robots should adhere to social norms. The fourth section of the Handbook, with 13 chapters, covers Legal Challenges for Human-Robot Interaction, in which we discuss robots and tort law, criminal law issues for human-robot interaction, constitutional issues such as free speech, how consumer law relates to human-robot interaction, how tax law relates to robots in the workforce, robots in outer space, and concluding thoughts by the editors.

The Central Contributions of the Handbook

In conclusion, the central contributions of The Cambridge Handbook of the Law, Policy, and Regulation for Human–Robot Interaction are to present the first book which covers issues of law, policy, and regulations which focus specifically on human-robot interaction. And we do so in an inclusive manner with scholars from law, social sciences, computer science and engineering contribution chapters. We also include an international perspective on the law and regulations which apply to human-robot interaction by discussing the law from the US, EU, Asia, and Australian jurisdictions. Second, the Handbook not only discusses the law which applies to human-robot interaction, but includes chapters from scholars who are doing pioneering research on how robots and humans interact together in social contexts.  Third, the cross-regional comparison of the law and policies which apply to human-robot interaction contributes productively to comparative law and policy. In contrast, much of the current literature on human-robot interaction continues to rely on intra-country or intra-regional comparisons. The Cambridge Handbook of the Law, Policy, and Regulation for Human–Robot Interaction informs us that there is much to be learned about the future direction of humanity by focusing on how humans are not only building what may become super intelligent entities (that in many ways may replace us in work and social settings), but how we are interacting with them at an interpersonal level. The 46 chapters in the Handbook, while providing great depth and breadth on the topic, are still considered by us to be a starting point to creating the appropriate law and policies to protect humanity in an age of increasingly intelligent robots and to provide opportunities for humanity and intelligent robots to live together, thrive, and flourish in the future which awaits us.