Europe's robots to become 'electronic persons' under draft plan
reuters.com
reuters.com
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...
It's just a report to the European Parliament, and as far as I can tell was never discussed, voted on, nor did it go anywhere. However it did generate 10+ pages of Google search results for articles of the "what are those crazy Europeans up to now" kind. It's another curved banana story (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6481969.stm).
Trivially false; human productivity routinely differs by a factor of thousands to millions.
its like, your business shouldn't be too dependent on the local government, just like it shouldn't be too dependent on 1 employee, or one copy of data. that's why some businesses negotiate with the government before expanding into a new area.
This draft legislation anticipates a secular change in the labour market whereby autonomous robots displace the need for humans so significantly that the pool of taxable labour vanishes for good.
Meanwhile economic output increases but there's no taxation system in place for the government to take a slice. So shift the tax burden to the robots.
It's far from perfect but sure as hell somebody (or something) is getting taxed.
This proposal reminds me of world of Time of EVE, an anime with truly electronic persons. It's all on YouTube.
What happens when the robots organize labor unions? Will this "electronic person' be allowed to vote for representation? Will they be entitled to medical care (I can't help but think of the Wizard of Oz's Tin Man getting his joints oiled...)
I'd be more than happy to postpone this question until the robots ask to be recognized as persons, until then the robots that I see are more like powertools able to do repetitive jobs with a high repeat accuracy. They are not 'persons' in any way that I recognize (but that may change, we are simply too far away from that to spend time on this right now).
Using that logic, no human should have rights unless they're able to express it; clearly flawed logic.
>> "They are not 'persons' in any way that I recognize (but that may change, we are simply too far away from that to spend time on this right now)."
Assuming no "human like" AI exist already is problematic. What if I told you that (insert advanced research lab) had AI that's behavior was identical to that of any random child you might met. Do you believe they deserve to know about the world, or should they be kept from the world? Do you believe the world has the right to know about them, or is it okay to keep their existence a secret? Should the artificial child the same rights as any child?
Well, there is a filed called 'machine learning', which helps design robots who will be able to learn. If they are able to learn and exhibit intelligent behavior, then we have to treat them as something more than rocks or hammers.
That is what the document is referring to - not pre-programmed robots, but AIs (robots who are able to learn, perceive, change behavior etc.).
I think you might have missed the full implication of that part.
Certainly, a sentient being can learn new things, but that's a matter of rule-base and memory. No actual intelligence required, IMO. Sentience, to me, goes toward a concept of self. Of being aware that one exists and is responsible for one's own actions.
Personally, I fine with having really smart-but-not-sentient hammers. I'd rather not have to lard up machinery with some touchy-feely "it's alive" sentiment. We won't have to have lots of hand-waving over whether or not that hammer is a slave or not.
If we can have an army of dumb robots performing the work that slaves do now more efficiently and cheaply, then we can easily spot the slave owners and remove them.
I think sentience is somewhat more limited. Most animals are sentient, in that they can feel and perceive and learn from experiences. Few animals besides humans are sapient, in that they can reason about complex and abstract ideas separate from direct experience, have a sense of self, and other criteria.
No actual intelligence required, IMO.
Sentience, to me, goes toward a concept of self. Of being aware that one exists and is responsible for one's own actions.
A hammer cannot be enslaved. A robot that is not sentient cannot be enslaved. I am against making something of that ilk that can be enslaved. Not because I disagree with the act of creation, but because I am against slavery.
It's not necessary to create sentience in our tools. Leave them as tools. It saves time, effort and anguish.
And I won't have to go to war with a slaveholder.
In any case, it seems to me that we don't understand consciousness and life enough to truly define any requirement for rights any better than the meaning of 'sentience'.
The real problem with automation is that it might (or not) increase the inequality in the value of human labour. The solution is income redistribution.
Corporations have rights of 'artificial persons', which are not identical to rights of 'natural persons'. There are differences, like:
- Corporations can be owned (enslaved), bought and sold. Humans can only be rented (a job, service).
- Corporations have tax advantages (deductions, deferring taxes on foreign income etc.) that regular humans don't have.
- Corporations don't go to prison; they just pay fines when they break the law.
- Corporations can easily become citizens of most other countries through subsidiaries, while humans cannot easily do that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_Rights_of_Mother_EarthRobots have the potential to give us what we've always wanted but could never ethically achieve: slaves. We want capable beings to do our bidding. To serve us, to build for us, to obey us. If we follow some nonsensical robotic social justice, we can lose this.
This type of stipulation is also an example of innovation-hindering regulation, and what a surprise, it's coming from the bureaucratic EU. Social security payable by robot owners. If I'm smarter and use something to compete more efficiently and productively, I'm penalized. Socialism in a nutshell: take from the bright, redistribute to the dim.
"But this time it's different!" We didn't tax the first people to create and operate the drill press, the lathe, or the milling station. Or the sewing machine for that matter.
Today those programs face a double-drainage problem: more people are using unemployment insurance, top-ups for low-wage workers, and old-age pensions at the same time, while less money is being contributed due to continuing depression-levels of unemployment and underemployment. Insofar as the EU expects roboticization to contribute to this double-drainage problem by shifting the labor-to-capital balance in factors of production further towards physical capital, they're trying to rebalance the insurance systems by taking more contribution from the capital side.
In short, they're trying to shift the tax burden to people who have money available to pay, rather than to people who increasingly don't.
It's a shitty kludge from a long-term public-policy perspective because it does nothing to solve the conflict over the economic pie between labor, financial capital, physical capital, and intellectual expertise, but as accountant-logic, it works out.
Robots have the potential to give us what we've always wanted but could never ethically achieve: slaves. We want capable beings to do our bidding. To serve us, to build for us, to obey us. If we follow some nonsensical robotic social justice, we can lose this.
When it comes to slavery of homo sapiens, it is still happening today in many forms (debt slavery, cheap labor, sex trafficking etc.) plus there is something called a job or a service, which is different from classical slavery in that you're not buying humans, but instead renting them.
You could have said something similar when black slaves were imported from Africa. You could have said that they will be enslaved because they are black and that white race is superior. All the whites would gang up and make a pact to enslave blacks and keep them illiterate (which actually happened).
As robots get more and more autonomous, and so are able to take over more jobs and need less human supervision, you reach a point where the owner of the robot is not really contributing any more to society than the people the robots have unemployed.
This will be especially true a generation later when the owners who actually bought the robots are gone and the new owners inherited the robots. The danger there is that we end up with a society where the the robot owners are like medieval lords, the robots are the serfs, and the rest of humanity are beggars, and your place in the world is largely fixed at birth except for a lucky few who are able to marry into the robot owner class.
Take for example taxation effects
> 23. Bearing in mind the effects that the development and deployment of robotics and AI might have on employment and, consequently, on the viability of the social security systems of the Member States, consideration should be given to the possible need to introduce corporate reporting requirements on the extent and proportion of the contribution of robotics and AI to the economic results of a company for the purpose of taxation and social security contributions; takes the view that in the light of the possible effects on the labour market of robotics and AI a general basic income should be seriously considered, and invites all Member States to do so;
The underlying issue is that the balance between two factors of production is changing. Robots are capital assets and and workers are human capital. Capital assets are replacing human capital.
There is absolutely no reason to treat robots different from other machinery and introduce new reporting for the purpose of taxation and social security contributions. There are more straight-forward ways to move taxation burden from human capital to capital.
I imagine a model like owner/operator truck drivers working for large shipping companies. They are paid by how far they drive, but are responsible for their own truck's maintenance. A robot owner/operator would get paid based on how much their robot worked, but would have to keep it in working order and ensure it meets the requirements for the job. The company would save a lot of HR costs if it leased a robot workforce.