Robots (on the verge of) entering society

[Cara]

Some steps seem to be being taken, slowly but surely, towards the creation of some kind of legal status for robots and AIs.

Please share any articles here that seem to indicate this.

~~~

First up: a possible route for this is creating a precedent by allowing people to be married to robots. At first it might be presented as an eccentric choice but over time messaging can be shifted according to public response. Also, it is fairly well understood that the highlighting of something in media tends to lead to mimicry (I am thinking here particularly of a study in Switzerland which showed media coverage correlation with suicide rates, here: https://jech.bmj.com/content/57/4/238).

If enough people copy the trend, there may then be calls for “something to be done to recognise this”.



Internet Enabled Consumer Devices
Robot-Human Marriages: The Future of Marriage?

Siobhan Treacy
26 November 2018

A man in Japan married a hologram earlier this month. But this is just the beginning of human-robot marriages.

https://electronics360.globalspec.com/images/assets/207/13207/Japan-marriage-hologram-1280_Main.jpg
Kondo's marriage to Miku may not have any legal standing, but that doesn't bother him. Source: AFP/Behrouz MEHRI

Apparently marrying robots and holograms is a new reality. Just how many people have married a robot or hologram? Not enough people have openly married a robot or hologram to gather exact data, but according to some technology experts, technology marriages are soon going to be a normal part of our lives.

One Japanese man has taken the plunge into robot-human partnership. Akihiko Kondo, from Tokyo, has married his Gatebox Virtual Robot. The Gatebox Virtual Robot was designed to be a companion for people who want to give up on dating, but do not want to be lonely. Gatebox can text Kondo while he is at work, turn on lights when he is coming home, brush her teeth with him, carry on a conversation and more.

Kondo named his hologram Hatsune Miku. Miku is a hologram of a 16-year-old female singer. Kondo and Miku “married” in early November in front of 40 guests. None of Kondo’s family attended the wedding. Kondo spent two million yen, or $17,600, on the ceremony and matching wedding rings. Kondo has a stuffed version of Miku that he sleeps with.

“I never cheated on her, I’ve always been in love with Miku-san. I’ve been thinking about her every day I’m in love with the whole concept of Hatsune Miku but I got married to the Miku of my house.” Kondo told The Japan Times.

While the Japanese government does not recognize this union as a legal marriage, Gatebox issued the couple a cross-dimension marriage certificate. Kondo is not the only person who has received one of these. According to Gatebox, they have issued 3,700 cross-dimension marriage certificates.

At a 2016 conference on this subject, David Levey, author of “Love + Sex with Robots (https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061359804/love-and-sex-with-robots/),” predicted that by 2050 legal and recognized technology marriages will exist. David Hanson, the creator of Sophia the Robot (http://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/10187/meet-saudi-arabia-s-newest-citizen-sophia-the-robot), an AI-based robot who is a legal citizen in Saudi Arabia, believes technology marriage could come earlier than that. In his research paper, "Entering the Age of Living Intelligence Systems and Android Society," Hanson says that he believes a robot civil rights movement, including the right to marry, will happen by 2045.

Kondo is not the only man who is in a technology marriage. In 2017, Zheng Jiajia built and married a robot (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/chinese-man-marries-robot-built-himself) in China after he gave up on dating human women. His robot wife can’t do things like walk or hold a full conversation, but don’t worry. Jiajia has plans to upgrade her so she can walk, talk and help with household chores.

Why are people marrying robots? The gender gap in China and Japan may be partly to blame. According to a 2016 World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report (http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2016/), for every 100 women born in China, 114 men were born. The report ranked Japan at 111 out of 144 countries on the gender gap scale. It also says that the average length of single life in Japan is 30 for women and 31 for men. This gender inequality results in more single and lonely men that are turning to unconventional partnerships.

Falling population rates (http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/japan-population/) is another factor that will affect partnerships. Since 2015, Japan’s population rates have been dropping rapidly. According to 2010 (https://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/kokusei/2010/final_en/final_en.html#Summary) and 2015 (https://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/kokusei/2015/summary.html) census reports, Japan’s population dropped by one million people in five years. In 2018, for the 37th year in a row (http://www.stat.go.jp/data/jinsui/topics/topi1091.html#aI-1), the number of children born in Japan has dropped. A 2015 report on aging populations (https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p95-16-1.pdf) predicts that 40% of Japan’s population will be defined as elderly by 2050. The rising interest in hologram and robot marriages could be linked to these population problems.

It looks like technology marriages are not going away any time soon. There are plenty of questions that can be asked about this trend, but for now, we will just have to wait and see how this plays out.
From: https://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/13207/robot-human-marriages-the-future-of-marriage

[Orph]

Hanson says that he believes a robot civil rights movement, including the right to marry, will happen by 2045

There could be an upside to this. If a person can get married to a robot, then why can't a person marry a whale. If the whale is somebody's spouse, then it can't be slaughtered "for scientific purposes".

SAVE A WHALE. MARRY ONE.

[Cara]

There could be an upside to this. If a person can get married to a robot, then why can't a person marry a whale. If the whale is somebody's spouse, then it can't be slaughtered "for scientific purposes".

SAVE A WHALE. MARRY ONE.

:thumbsup: Great point! Go big: :bigfish:

[conk]

Does a toaster oven need legal rights? A vacuum cleaner? Please, how do questions like this even arise?!

[Cara]

Does a toaster oven need legal rights? A vacuum cleaner? Please, how do questions like this even arise?!

I don’t know conk

Your questions are the logical extension to granting some kind of personhood status to AIs and robots. At first glance this seems trivial but I think it would be very complicated and quite difficult to differentiate between different “levels” of AI.

Another thing to consider is whether these kinds of moves have a side effect of reducing the perceived value of human life. If machines are granted similar legal status as humans does that make humans somehow less human?

There’s lots to think about here.

[Cara]

This article was shared by a website reader of Joseph Farrell’s, who in turn blogged about it here (https://gizadeathstar.com/2019/08/ai-patents-and-personhood/).


Scientists Are Trying to List AI as the Inventor on a New Patent
They say rules requiring that patents go to humans are outdated.

Dan Robitzski

Scientists and lawyers from the U.K. are fighting with patent offices in three separate countries over who deserves credit for new inventions churned out by artificial intelligence algorithms.

Legal experts and American engineer Stephen Thaler, the inventor of an algorithm named Dabus AI, have filed for patents in the U.K., Europe, and the U.S. in Dabus’ “name,” arguing that the algorithm deserves proper attribution for designing new products, according to BBC News (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49191645). But the patent offices have pushed back, as traditionally legal rights go to humans. It’s an unusual disagreement that illustrates how our legal systems are unprepared to accommodate new, emerging technologies.

The scientists believe that Dabus AI deserves legal credit as the inventor of the fractal-based easier-to-grasp food container that it designed, as well as a lamp that it built to flicker in a pattern that mirrors brain activity. Then, legal rights over the creation should go to whomever actually built the algorithm in question.

As it stands, the person behind Dabus AI has no legal claim to a patent on the algorithm’s inventions.

“So with patents, a patent office might say, ‘If you don’t have someone who traditionally meets human-inventorship criteria, there is nothing you can get a patent on,'” University of Surrey law professor Ryan Abbott told BBC. “In which case, if AI is going to be how we’re inventing things in the future, the whole intellectual property system will fail to work.”

The problem with their case, though, is that even the world’s best AI systems are merely tools (https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence-hype) — they’re not alive or sentient (https://futurism.com/artificial-consciousness), and they’re not actually “creative” as a person might be.

A spokeswoman from the European Patent Office told BBC that it’s hesitant to grant patents to AI because doing so would likely set create unforeseen legal precedents — the office doesn’t take upending existing patent law lightly.

The requirement for a human inventor behind every patent is meant to keep patents in the hands of inventors instead of corporations, per the BBC. But this sort of worker protection wasn’t crafted with the future of AI in mind — the human requirement in the U.K., for example, comes from a patent law written in 1977 (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-patents-act-1977).

“The current state of technological development suggests that, for the foreseeable future, AI is… a tool used by a human inventor,” the unnamed spokeswoman told BBC. “Any change… [would] have implications reaching far beyond patent law, ie to authors’ rights under copyright laws, civil liability and data protection. The EPO is, of course, aware of discussions in interested circles and the wider public about whether AI could qualify as inventor.”

Abbott concedes that this is a complex legal matter that could take years to sort out; he doesn’t expect Dabus to get its patents overnight. But the fact that this argument is happening now instead of before it became a problem is a troubling sign of how the law tends to lag behind technology, a problem that tends to either give engineers too much free rein or stall them in their tracks.

READ MORE: AI system ‘should be recognised as inventor’ [BBC News] (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49191645)
From: https://futurism.com/scientists-ai-inventor-patent

[Cara]

A bicycle-riding robot, from China:

1189362184754749440

[Sunny-side-up]

A bicycle-riding robot, from China:

1189362184754749440

Now that would be truly amazing, if the Bot got off the bike and posted a letter.

[Bill Ryan]

Do also see these (concerning!) threads:


SPOT, the robot dog, developed by Boston Dynamics (this should make us all very worried) (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?80207-SPOT-the-robot-dog-developed-by-Boston-Dynamics--this-should-make-us-all-very-worried-)
Newest Boston Dynamics Robot ('Handle') leaked (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?95776-Newest-Boston-Dynamics-Robot---Handle---leaked)

[Cara]

MIT university has created a “team” of what they call cheetah robots:

1192429991813881856

[Mashika]

MIT university has created a “team” of what they call cheetah robots:

1192429991813881856

When i first read Fahrenheit 451 i though the mechanical dog was like a representation of something else, like the gov killing you if you went too far against it and it could "sniff" you out and take you down, just like it happens some times in some countries today :P

But now seeing this i think i have a different perspective, it may still be the gov doing that, but these robots are looking way too much close to how the hound would be on that book

Most scary think is, i'm kind of working on a project to use cameras around a city to help direct a small drone through a location using a cellular phone

The idea being that if you have a phone and there's an accident and you can't move out of a car or wall, you can use an app that sends a signal and then the drone and people directing it will be helped by some cameras sending data to an AI engine will figure out your exact location and send help and communicate with you while help is on the way. I'm thinking stuff right now, like what if this is used in a "different way"

*shocked*

[Cara]

*shocked*

They do have a way of moving that is “unnerving”.

~~~

More robots “entering society”:


Police robot told woman to go away after she tried to report crime – then sang a song
Jimmy McCloskeyFriday 4 Oct 2019 7:16 pm

https://i0.wp.com/metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/comp-1570212652.png?quality=90&strip=all&zoom=1&resize=644%2C362&ssl=1
A high-tech police robot told a woman to go away when she tried to report a crime – then trundled away while singing a song (Pictures: ABC7/Huntington Park PD)

A police robot told a woman to go away after she tried to report a violent brawl breaking out nearby – then trundled off while singing a song.

Cogo Guebara rushed over to the motorized police officer and pushed its emergency alert button on seeing the brawl break out in Salt Lake Park, Los Angeles, last month.

But instead of offering assistance, the egg-shaped robot, whose official name is HP RoboCop, barked at Guebara to ‘Step out of the way’.

To add insult to injury, the high-tech device then rolled away while humming an ‘intergalactic tune’, pausing periodically to say ‘Please keep the park clean.’

Guebara told NBC News: ‘I was pushing the button but it said, “Step out of the way.”

Police say the robot is still in its test phase, but will ultimately have its alert button connected to their dispatch center (Picture: Huntington Park PD)
‘It just kept ringing and ringing, and I kept pushing and pushing.’

The concerned bystander thought the five-foot tall robot might have needed to see her face before it began to work, so she crouched down in front of its camera.

But the egg-shaped device still didn’t work, forcing Guebara to call 911 on her phone instead.

Officers from the Huntington Park Police Department cops finally arrived 15 minutes later, after the row had ended.

It left one woman with a bad head wound which saw her stretchered into an ambulance and taken to hospital for emergency treatment.

Local Police Chief Cosme Lozano says the robots, which cost between $60,000 and $70,000 a year to lease, are still in a trial phase and that their alert buttons have not yet been activated.

He said that law enforcement have not yet started advertising the robots crime-fighting activities.

Any help requests are currently sent to a company called Knightscope, which creates and leases the robots.

Lozano added that once the robot completes its trial, calls made using its alert button will be sent straight to dispatch.

Other versions of the same model have previously hit the headlines after one fell into a fountain in Washington DC.

And a third HP RoboCop struck a child while patrolling a mall in California’s Silicon Valley.
From: https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/04/police-robot-told-woman-go-away-tried-report-crime-sang-song-10864648/

[Mashika]

*shocked*

They do have a way of moving that is “unnerving”.

~~~

More robots “entering society”:


Police robot told woman to go away after she tried to report crime – then sang a song
Jimmy McCloskeyFriday 4 Oct 2019 7:16 pm

https://i0.wp.com/metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/comp-1570212652.png?quality=90&strip=all&zoom=1&resize=644%2C362&ssl=1
A high-tech police robot told a woman to go away when she tried to report a crime – then trundled away while singing a song (Pictures: ABC7/Huntington Park PD)

A police robot told a woman to go away after she tried to report a violent brawl breaking out nearby – then trundled off while singing a song.

Cogo Guebara rushed over to the motorized police officer and pushed its emergency alert button on seeing the brawl break out in Salt Lake Park, Los Angeles, last month.

But instead of offering assistance, the egg-shaped robot, whose official name is HP RoboCop, barked at Guebara to ‘Step out of the way’.

To add insult to injury, the high-tech device then rolled away while humming an ‘intergalactic tune’, pausing periodically to say ‘Please keep the park clean.’

Guebara told NBC News: ‘I was pushing the button but it said, “Step out of the way.”

Police say the robot is still in its test phase, but will ultimately have its alert button connected to their dispatch center (Picture: Huntington Park PD)
‘It just kept ringing and ringing, and I kept pushing and pushing.’

The concerned bystander thought the five-foot tall robot might have needed to see her face before it began to work, so she crouched down in front of its camera.

But the egg-shaped device still didn’t work, forcing Guebara to call 911 on her phone instead.

Officers from the Huntington Park Police Department cops finally arrived 15 minutes later, after the row had ended.

It left one woman with a bad head wound which saw her stretchered into an ambulance and taken to hospital for emergency treatment.

Local Police Chief Cosme Lozano says the robots, which cost between $60,000 and $70,000 a year to lease, are still in a trial phase and that their alert buttons have not yet been activated.

He said that law enforcement have not yet started advertising the robots crime-fighting activities.

Any help requests are currently sent to a company called Knightscope, which creates and leases the robots.

Lozano added that once the robot completes its trial, calls made using its alert button will be sent straight to dispatch.

Other versions of the same model have previously hit the headlines after one fell into a fountain in Washington DC.

And a third HP RoboCop struck a child while patrolling a mall in California’s Silicon Valley.
From: https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/04/police-robot-told-woman-go-away-tried-report-crime-sang-song-10864648/

“Step out of the way.”

LOL, i remember from West World that phrase "It doesn't look like anything to me"

So cold and direct, just like a robot would say. So what to say next? I'm very much into tech and AI and i can see the problem with it, just like that women faced with the half working robot

[Bluegreen]

The idea being that if you have a phone and there's an accident and you can't move out of a car or wall, you can use an app that sends a signal and then the drone and people directing it will be helped by some cameras sending data to an AI engine will figure out your exact location and send help and communicate with you while help is on the way. I'm thinking stuff right now, like what if this is used in a "different way"


This was the reason people bought cell phones when they were first introduced:

"What if there's an accident or my car breaks down?"

Look where we are now.

Kondo from Japan? He has my pity.

[ExomatrixTV]

A.I. is Progressing Faster Than You Think! (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?102409-A.I.-is-Progressing-Faster-Than-You-Think-)

[Mashika]

The idea being that if you have a phone and there's an accident and you can't move out of a car or wall, you can use an app that sends a signal and then the drone and people directing it will be helped by some cameras sending data to an AI engine will figure out your exact location and send help and communicate with you while help is on the way. I'm thinking stuff right now, like what if this is used in a "different way"


This was the reason people bought cell phones when they were first introduced:

"What if there's an accident or my car breaks down?"

Look where we are now.

Kondo from Japan? He has my pity.

Well technology works like that, you find other uses for it and not all of them are bad

Cars were not invented to race as a sport and yet
Planes were invented for travel and we got them for wars also
Guns were invented to kill but we also use them as sport on the range, without killing
Microwaves started as a medical tool and now we use that tech to (sometimes) heat food

In the future we may have better tech to help someone recover from a bad accident and replace internal organs with artificial ones. And i'm pretty sure that same tech will be used to enhance humans for other reasons, like for new sports or work or war


The alternative would be to not have any tech or stop the progress because we can't control that some tech can result in other uses we would not want?

Anyway we are using a phone app because it's very costly to develop a proof of concept for the real device we wanted and it's just a college project so no :)

But anyway. the entire point of what i was saying is that the same tech that could save a life could also be use to destroy one, and that's shocking for me when i think about it

[shaberon]

In the future we may have better tech to help someone recover from a bad accident and replace internal organs with artificial ones.

Here it looks to me like the direction is really to regrow organs out of your own tissue. That sounds like one of the least invasive things they ever came up with.

People have legally married dogs, and objects such as rocks. That's not quite the same as thousands of rock wives entering society, but non-human marriages have occurred.

It will probably take about eight years for robot wives to become an ordinary household item like Windows 95.

[Mashika]

In the future we may have better tech to help someone recover from a bad accident and replace internal organs with artificial ones.

Here it looks to me like the direction is really to regrow organs out of your own tissue. That sounds like one of the least invasive things they ever came up with..

Partially yes, but growing organs like that doesn't allow you to enhance them, which is something we will need later on, and if the tech is available to do it you can bet it will be used

Like better breathing under water, or space, or hearts that can resist better than a normal heart would. Better hands that can perform better surgeries, better eyes to go with those hands, and so

See what i mean?





People have legally married dogs, and objects such as rocks. That's not quite the same as thousands of rock wives entering society, but non-human marriages have occurred.

It will probably take about eight years for robot wives to become an ordinary household item like Windows 95


LOL well i don't know about that stuff, i don't follow that life style and it seems a lot more focused on America/Japan's ways than how i live my life

[shaberon]

Partially yes, but growing organs like that doesn't allow you to enhance them, which is something we will need later on, and if the tech is available to do it you can bet it will be used

Like better breathing under water, or space, or hearts that can resist better than a normal heart would. Better hands that can perform better surgeries, better eyes to go with those hands, and so




Why would you specifically say we need to make enhanced organs?

I am not sure what to think about indelible "alterations" to the human being or species. I tend to agree with that aspect of medicine that responds to trauma and to acute conditions, and am leery of a good bit of the other stuff.

The non-human marriages and bonding with an android is beyond me. I cannot remotely relate to what must be the motivations of a lot of people.

[Mashika]

Partially yes, but growing organs like that doesn't allow you to enhance them, which is something we will need later on, and if the tech is available to do it you can bet it will be used

Like better breathing under water, or space, or hearts that can resist better than a normal heart would. Better hands that can perform better surgeries, better eyes to go with those hands, and so




Why would you specifically say we need to make enhanced organs?

I am not sure what to think about indelible "alterations" to the human being or species. I tend to agree with that aspect of medicine that responds to trauma and to acute conditions, and am leery of a good bit of the other stuff.

The non-human marriages and bonding with an android is beyond me. I cannot remotely relate to what must be the motivations of a lot of people.

It won't be possible to live in space or do long trips to other planets with the way current humans are built, humans organs need to be enhanced before being able to do long space travel or living long term out there in space

https://www.labiotech.eu/features/biotechnology-space-travel/

[Cara]

There’s a large dose of fear-mongering and anti-China propaganda in this piece (to be expected from a tabloid style media outlet). Probably the “western” based arms industry is upset they didn’t win the deal.


Chinese killer robots sold to Middle East will leave 'every human dead'

Fears that 'fully autonomous' military drones sold by China to Middle East countries could have dire results with the machines able to decide on who lives and dies

BY TIM HANLON
17:52, 14 NOV 2019

https://i2-prod.dailystar.co.uk/incoming/article20882693.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/0_Screen-Shot-2019-11-13-at-174008-copy.jpg
Fears over military 'killer robots'(Image: Supplied)

China is selling its most advanced “fully autonomous” military drones with fears that it could lead to a bloodbath in the Middle East.

The Asian superpower is reportedly selling AI-enhanced combat drones to the region, with potentially disastrous consequences.

Prof Toby Walsh, of the University of NSW, in Australia, said: “They would be impossible to defend yourself against.

“Once the shooting starts, every human on the battlefield will be dead.”

https://i2-prod.dailystar.co.uk/incoming/article20882699.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/0_Screen-Shot-2019-11-13-at-173816-copy.jpg
China have reportedly sold the drones to Middle East countries(Image: Supplied)

US Defence Sec Mark Esper has said that China is selling drones programmed to decide themselves who lives or dies.

He told a conference on Artificial Intelligence: “As we speak, the Chinese government is already exporting some of its most advanced military aerial drones to the Middle East as it prepares to export its next generation stealth UAVs when those come online.

“In addition, Chinese weapons manufacturers are selling drones advertised as capable of full autonomy including the ability to conduct lethal, targeted strikes.”

An Australian outlet, news.com.au, reports that a state controlled Chinese defence company is negotiating the sale of its Blowfish A3 armed helicopter drone to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Dr Malcolm Davis, an Australian Strategic Policy Institute analyst says that it is not strange there is no debate over the sales in China.

He reportedly said: “This isn’t a surprise.

The drones have the ability to decide 'who lives and dies'(Image: Supplied)
“Authoritarian adversaries do not need to conduct the same domestic debate on lethal autonomous weapons as western liberal democracies, because they are not answerable to their people.

“There is no ‘ban killer robots’ movement in China or Russia. The regimes are simply developing and deploying the weapons – and in this case - exporting them to similar regimes in the Middle East.”

The US military though are planning an ethics code for Artificial Intelligence use.

Western countries are planning to tackle the “killer robots” with unmanned systems which humans can override.

Dr Davis said: “While we will ensure our unmanned systems have humans ‘on the loop’ with political oversight into use, it is quite possible that our adversaries will equip with fully autonomous lethal systems.

“That could give them an advantage in a future war.”
From: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/chinese-killer-robots-sold-middle-20882729.amp?__twitter_impression=true

[Bill Ryan]

Partially yes, but growing organs like that doesn't allow you to enhance them, which is something we will need later on, and if the tech is available to do it you can bet it will be used

Like better breathing under water, or space, or hearts that can resist better than a normal heart would. Better hands that can perform better surgeries, better eyes to go with those hands, and so



Why would you specifically say we need to make enhanced organs?

I am not sure what to think about indelible "alterations" to the human being or species. I tend to agree with that aspect of medicine that responds to trauma and to acute conditions, and am leery of a good bit of the other stuff.

The non-human marriages and bonding with an android is beyond me. I cannot remotely relate to what must be the motivations of a lot of people.

It won't be possible to live in space or do long trips to other planets with the way current humans are built, humans organs need to be enhanced before being able to do long space travel or living long term out there in space

https://www.labiotech.eu/features/biotechnology-space-travel/

~~~

See this thread: (I put the title in quotes as I'm not convinced I fully agree with the premise!)


"Why Human Enhancement is Necessary for Successful Human Deep-space Missions" (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?108726-Why-Human-Enhancement-is-Necessary-for-Successful-Human-Deep-space-Missions)