Can a Robot Be Arrested? Hold a Patent? Pay Income Taxes?

When horses were replaced by engines, for work and transportation, we didn’t need to rethink our legal frameworks. So when a fixed-in-place factory machine is replaced by a free-standing AI robot, or when human truck driver is replaced by autonomous driving software, do we really need to make any fundamental changes to the law? 

My guest today seems to think so. Or perhaps more accurately, he thinks that surprisingly, we do not; he says we need to change the laws less than we think. In case after case, he says, we just need to treat the robot more or less the same way we treat a person. 

A year ago, he was giving presentations in which he argued that Ais can be patentholders. Since then, his views have advanced even further. And so last summer, Cambridge University Press published a short but powerful treatise, The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Intelligence and the Law. In it, he argues that the law more often than not should not discriminate between AI and human behavior.

Ryan Abbott is a Professor of Law and Health Sciences at the University of Surrey and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He’s a licensed physician, and an attorney, and an acupuncturist in the United States, as well as a solicitor in England and Wales. His M.D. is from UC San Diego’s School of Medicine; his J.D. is from Yale Law School and his M.T.O.M.—Master of Traditional Oriental Medicine—degree is from Emperor's College.