Europe's robots to become 'electronic persons' under draft plan
reuters.comHere is the actual draft:
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).
It appears the main motivation here is to maintain the same level of taxation on a business that switches from human to robot workers for a significant part of the labour undertaken.
What's the reason to single out robots and not other means of production / capital though? There's no real distinction between a robot and a drilling machine, car, accounting software or anything that improves productivity.
You raise a good question. In most cases there's a person manning that drilling machine, driving that car, or typing into that piece of software.
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.
There is VAT. If the output really increases then VAT's output increases too. However, of nobody works who's going to pay that VAT? We'll see how it will play out.
This proposal reminds me of world of Time of EVE, an anime with truly electronic persons. It's all on YouTube.
here in texas, the county governments tax income producing property: http://www.appraisaldistrictguide.com/personal-property-tax....
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.
One problem with this is that one human is a pretty constant unit of work in a way that one robot isn't. What if one robot can do the work of 1000 humans? Or what if a very cheap robot does 1/100 of a human's work? Under this system it sounds like they would be taxed the same way.
And how do you isolate a robot "individual"?
I suppose you could do it by appendage, but then a humanoid robot would be 4 persons.
I count 20 of them.
21 here.
You only have one ear?
"one human is a pretty constant unit of work"
Trivially false; human productivity routinely differs by a factor of thousands to millions.
How far will this go?
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...)
At which point you might as well just buy out the business and establish proper collective ownership over a "business" that now consists of a few people operating a lot of robots.
How do they even define a robot? Is an asea automatic welder a robot? A pick-and-place unit?
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).
>> "I'd be more than happy to postpone this question until the robots ask to be recognized as persons"
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?
I can't tell what this is supposed to mean. Taxing employers for using robots as if they were human employees might be a good idea. But giving robots 'rights and obligations' as if they were human is totally insane.
They just want taxes and the ability to control robots "replacing" workers.
Why tax companies for becoming more productive though. Especially considering that international competitors which are not taxed would take their market share. People often don't realize that the company won't necessarily make more money once it starts using robots - in competetive markets, profits approach zero.
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.
I can see a case for obligations much more than I can see one for rights.
Well, someday we might inevitably need to discuss robot rights, but that'd be somewhere past the point where we can declare a robot a sentient being. ;)
Why is being 'sentient' (a vague term) a requirement for something to have rights?
I'm certain in this context "rights" refers to the rights regularly afforded to human beings (as in the european proposal), not to the rights we might assign to non-sentient animals.
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'.
Until it is sentient, it's just a hammer with pre-programmed response. After that, it can define itself.
So, sentient means 'having the ability to learn new things' ? Kinda like humans, who are born with certain instincts, but are then able to learn new things or 're-program' themselves.
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.).
> it can define itself.
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.
>> 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.
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.
This is a trick. What does 'actual intelligence' mean? Term 'intelligence' is already vague, so adding 'actual' creates even more confusion.No actual intelligence required, IMO.
Responsibility is a social construct. In the past, people would put non-human animals on trial, because in those societies other animals had responsibility for their acts. When it comes to awareness, that's a very vague thing and I'm not sure how you would test it without asking the subject (who might be fooling you). Also, why would having an attribute such as 'awareness' be a reason not to enslave someone who has the attribute?Sentience, to me, goes toward a concept of self. Of being aware that one exists and is responsible for one's own actions.It may be a gray area, but I, personally, have a moral and ethical bias against slavery and those who condone or enable it.
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.
This is an interesting idea. Robots don't need to have human rights. They can have 'robot rights'. In Bolivia, for example, there are rights of nature (applies to living and non-living things) [1]. There is also a strong advocacy for animal rights. The concept of 'right' doesn't only apply to humans.
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_EarthPeople are missing the point of robots.
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.
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.
This has nothing to do with socialism per se, only with the balance of labor versus physical capital as input factors of production. All existing social-insurance systems were built under the assumption that production was an innately labor-intensive process, and thus that setting a payroll tax on labor would be sufficient to fund the insurance programs, provided unemployment was kept away from depression levels by other means.
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.
It's the people who made the robot that are bright. The people who use the robot may or may not be bright...all you can say for sure about them is that they had enough money to buy a robot.
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.
Why is it ethical to enslave robots? Why should highly intelligent entities do the work so that some lazy, fat slobs in the human form can parasite off its labor? You are deluding yourself if you think there won't be justice for robots. There was justice for black slaves, for women, for minorities, today we're working on animals and nature. Justice for robots will be achieved, maybe even faster than others, since we can use previous victories and examples and build on top of that.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).
I agree with VDMA, the proposal is too complicated and too early. The proposal looks like half baked brainstorming. I like the fact that the proposal is too far forward looking. It's better to think these issues 100 years too early than 100 years too late.
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.
Robot rights make sense to prepare for a time when there is rough intellectual parity between humans and robots and the possibility of an adversarial relationship arises. I think it's unlikely, but still important, given the impact such a relationship would have. Giving robots human rights now would be like giving an ant human rights, but it makes sense to give rights in accordance with some measure of intelligence I think.
The fact that you know you are aware, shouldn't be even possible to begin with. What I am getting at is that I don't think there a physical explanation for it. If that is the case, then there is no reason for a robot to have rights, regardless of how human it seems.
I misread that as "daft plan", and actually, it's still accurate.
Most likely a typo in the title.
If I'm a factory worker that gets replaced by a robot, I want a cut. :) But I can't think of how to structure the law so that the company has to lease the robot through the employee they are replacing.
Perhaps every robot must be tied to a person, and each person can only own one robot (or some limited amount). Then if a company wants to build up a robot workforce they would have to lease from robot owner/operators.
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.
The article does a bad job explaining that this is just a draft by one committee in the europarliament, and unlikely to get anything resembling majority support anywhere.
What if the robot becomes CEO?
Then we will have robots doing jail-time in cases like Enron.
Were that the case, robot CEOs would quickly become the norm. Just in case.
That's just what the robots wanted.
"Your Honor, I swear the AI told me to do it!"
Your Honor, i swear that this so called tax avoidance where within numeric error ranges. We are all feeble silicon after all..
"I can prove it mathematically!"