Robotrust and Legal Responsibility

Abstract

The paper examines some aspects of today's debate on trust and e-trust and, more specifically, issues of legal responsibility for the production and use of robots. Their impact on human-to-human interaction has produced new problems both in the fields of contractual and extra-contractual liability in that robots negotiate, enter into contracts, establish rights and obligations between humans, while reshaping matters of responsibility and risk in trust relations. Whether or not robotrust concerns human-to-robot or even robot-to-robot relations, there is a new generation of cases involving human-to-human contractual and extra-contractual liability for robots' behaviour because, for the first time, legal systems hold you responsible for what an artificial system autonomously decides to do.

Trust in robot futures: The role of sociotechnical potential

“…In that regard it is important to understand the new ways in which robots can become defined within such a society. This is for instance explicated by looking at the ways in which robots can be held responsible for their actions (Pagallo 2010).…”

Distributed Epistemic Responsibility in a Hyperconnected Era

“…Coeckelbergh 2009) and robotics (e.g. Pagallo 2010). With respect to accountability, Nissenbaum's (1997) paper on accountability in a computerized society is surely an early seminal piece, in which different causes for contemporary difficulties in accountability attribution are already worked out: the problem of many hands, the problem of bugs, using the computer as a scapegoat, and ownership without liability.…”

Robots of Just War: A Legal Perspective

“…Needless to stress the difference between surgical robotics and robot toys, between industrial and military robotics, and so forth: here, issues of legal responsibility depend on whether robots work within limits of a given set of parameters so as to attain specific goals. In 2008, for example, Foster-Miller denied any liability for the unintended movement of some Sword unites employed by the US army, whereas the Penn-Lehman Automated Trading project on the so-called ZI agents was suspended in 2005, because it was not possible to program robot traders able to effectively speculate against (smart) humans: sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania and Lehman Brothers, the project was abandoned 3 years before Lehman Brothers' own collapse (Pagallo 2010a).…”