U.S. tells Google computers can qualify as drivers

Re:U.S. tells Google computers can qualify as drivers by icebraining on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @08:42AM (#11072615)

The thing is: what's the purpose of finding "the algorithm" guilty of a crime? A company owns assets that can be used to pay fines and damages, and as a semi-autonomous entity (in the sense that "it" still exists even if all of its owners and workers are replaced) it can be prohibited or forced to do something. An algorithm, on the other hand, owns nothing and its actions are wholly dependent on the people that program and configure it.

If the purpose is to account for freak events where the algo misbehaves for reasons that couldn't be foreseen, is that any different than a (non-autonomous) vehicle part failing despite being well-designed and maintained? This is not a new situation - an algorithm is just another car part. You don't need to give legal personality to the fuel injection pumps or the steering column in case it fails unexpectedly.

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Re:U.S. tells Google computers can qualify as drivers by TheOtherHobbes on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @09:32AM (#11072934)

It's entertaining that apparently one of our signifiers of independent personhood is "Can drive a car."

This issue is only confusing to the extent this isn't considered.

>an algorithm is just another car part

Exactly. And the designer is on the hook for negligence in the usual way - but not for malicious, tragic, and/or unforseeable circumstances that may lead to death or injury.

Finding the boundary between those will keep a lot of lawyers very busy. But I don't think we need to start assigning personhood and agency to a steering system just yet.

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Re:U.S. tells Google computers can qualify as drivers by jtolmar on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @04:57PM (#11076401)

With the comment that sparked off this thread, I wasn't implying the car had any sense of agency. Rather, that legal personhood might be a good way to sort out the laws.

A corporation is a legal person, which makes it a lot easier to enter a contract with one, but that doesn't imply it has rights. You can own a corporation without it being slavery.

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Re:U.S. tells Google computers can qualify as drivers by jtolmar on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @04:53PM (#11076366)

The purpose I had in mind when I first mentioned the idea was just to provide a convenient way to reason about the law. It lets you re-use laws written with human drivers in mind, instead of having to individually recontextualize each as a type of mechanical failure. So you can charge the car with reckless driving, instead of having to show that an algorithmic failure lead to a behavior consistent with reckless driving.

It's still an abstraction over something akin to mechanical failure, like how corporate personhood is an abstraction over a group of people. It doesn't mean the algorithm has rights, any more than a fuel injection pump does. You also can't murder a corporation, even though it's a legal person.

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