Spring Semester 2015

Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and the Law

Professor Jack M. Balkin

Yale Law School

Syllabus (02252015 Version)

1. Introduction: Robotics and Cyberlaw (1/26/2015)

  1. Ryan Calo, A Horse of a Different Color, Slate, at http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/10/robotics_law_should_take_cues_from_cyberlaw.single.html
  2. Ryan Calo, Robotics and the Lessons of Cyberlaw (available on course site)

 

2. How to Regulate a Robot (2/02/2015)

  1. Isaac Asimov, Runaround (available on course site)
  2. The Golem of Prague, from A Treasury of Jewish Folklore (available on course site)
  3. R.U.R. Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R. (for an English translation of the play, see http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/capek/karel/rur/frontmatter.html)
  4. Toyota Case: Single Bit Flip that Killed, Junko Yoshida http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319903
  5. Robin Marantz, Henig, Death By Robot, New York Times Magazine, at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/magazine/death-by-robot.html
  6. Joanna J. Bryson, Patiency Is Not a Virtue: Intelligent Artefacts and the Design of Ethical Systems, at https://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/~jjb/ftp/Bryson-MQ-J.pdf
  7. Reverse Engineering Information Privacy Law, Michael Birnhack (pages 32-51), available at http://yjolt.org/reverse-engineering-informational-privacy-law (read section on Technology Neutral Laws)

 

3. Robot Responsibility I: Robots and War (2/09/2015)

  1. Human Rights Watch & Int’l Human Rights Clinic, Harvard Law Sch., Advancing the Debate on Killer Robots: 12 Key Arguments for a Preemptive Ban on Fully Autonomous Weapons (2014), http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/Advancing%20the%20Debate_8May2014_Final.pdf.
  2. Michael Schmitt, Autonomous Weapon Systems and International Humanitarian Law: A Reply to the Critics, 2013 Harv. Nat’l Sec. J. Features, http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Schmitt-Autonomous-Weapon-Systems-and-IHL-Final.pdf.
  3. P.W. Singer, Robots at War: The New Battlefield, 2008 Wilson Q. 30, http://archive.wilsonquarterly.com/sites/default/files/articles/WQ_VOL33_W_2009_Article_03.pdf.

 

4. Robot Responsibility II: Civil Liability (2/16/2015)

  1. The Application of Traditional Tort Theory to Embodied Machine Intelligence, Curtis E.A. Karnow, http://works.bepress.com/curtis_karnow/9/ (18 pages)
  2. Open Robotics, Ryan Calo, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1706293 (read pp 101-107; 122-140)(~25 pages)

 

5. Robot Responsibility III: Self-Driving Cars (2/23/2015)

  1. Google’s Self-Driving Cars: 300,000 Miles Logged, Not a Single Accident Under Computer Control, Rebecca J. Rosen, The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/12/08/googles-selfdriving-cars-300000-miles-logged-not-a-single-accident-under-computer-control/260926/
  2. The Reasonable Self Driving Car, Bryant Walker Smith (Oct. 2013) http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/10/reasonable-self-driving-car
  3. Patrick Lin, The Ethics of Self-Driving Cars, The Atlantic (Oct. 8, 2013), http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/the-ethics-of-autonomous-cars/280360/
  4. Jack Boeglin, The Costs of Self-Driving Cars, Yale J. of Law & Tech. (forthcoming 2015)(available on course site)

 

6. Robot Responsibility IV: Criminal Liability (3/02/2015)

  1. I, Robot - I, Criminal–When Science Fiction Becomes Reality: Legal Liability of AI Robots Committing Criminal Offenses, Gabriel Hallevy, Syracuse Science & Technology Law Reporter 22 (2010) http://jost.syr.edu/2010/08/02/i-robot-i-criminal-when-science-fiction-becomes-reality-legal-liability-of-ai-robots-committing-criminal-offenses/ (37 pages)
  2. Drama as Police Arraign Monkeys for Robbery, http://sunnewsonline.com/new/?p=29452
  3. The Proposed New Copyright Crime of “Aiding and Abetting”, Michael Carrier, http://blog.oup.com/2010/10/copyright-crime/
  4. Ryan Calo, A Robot Really Committed a Crime, Now What?, at http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryancalo/2014/12/23/a-robot-really-committed-a-crime-now-what/
  5. Swiss Public Prosecutor Seizes And Seals Work By !Mediengruppe Bitnik, at https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org/r/2015-01-15-statement/
  6. John Frank Weaver, Who’s Responsible When a Twitter Bot Sends a Threatening Tweet?, Slate, at http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/02/25/who_is_responsible_for_death_threats_from_a_twitter_bot.html

 

7. Robot Creativity, Authorship, and Ownership I: Should AI-generated speech be protected by the First Amendment? (3/09/2015)

  1. Free Speech for Computers, Tim Wu http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/opinion/free-speech-for-computers.html
  2. Freedom of Speech and Information Produced Using Computer Algorithms, Eugene Volokh, http://www.volokh.com/2012/06/21/freedom-of-speech-and-information-produced-using-computer-algorithms/
  3. Automated Arrangement of Information, Frank Pasquale, http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2012/06/automated-arrangement-of-information-speech-conduct-and-power.html
  4. Stuart Minor Benjamin, Algorithms and Speech, 161 U. Penn. L. Rev. 1445 (2013)

 

8. Robot Creativity, Authorship, and Ownership II: Who Owns What Robots Write? Copyright Issues (3/23/2015)

  1. Pamela Samuelson, Allocating Ownership Rights in Computer-Generated Works, 1185 University of Pittsburgh Law Review 47 (1986)
  2. Annemarie Bridy, Coding Creativity: Copyright and the Artificially Intelligent Author, 2012 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 5
  3. Monkey Business: Can a Monkey License Its Copyrights to A News Agency? http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110706/00200314983/monkey-business-can-monkey-license-its-copyrights-to-news-agency.shtml
  4. Lauren Raab, Monkey Selfies Can’t Be Copyrighted, Federal Office Decides, L.A. Times, at http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-monkey-selfie-copyright-20140821-story.html
  5. Alex Hudson, Man or Machine: Can Robots Really Write Novels?, BBC News, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9764416.stm
  6. Electronic Frontier Foundation, Who Will Own the Internet of Things? (Hint: Not the Users), at https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/who-will-own-internet-things-hint-not-users

 

9. Robot Creativity, Authorship, and Ownership III: Who Owns and/or is Responsible for what Robots Invent and/or Build? Intellectual Property and 3D Printers (3/30/2015)

  1. Michael Weinberg, It will be Awesome if They Don’t Screw it Up, http://www.publicknowledge.org/it-will-be-awesome-if-they-dont-screw-it-up
  2. Deven Desai and Gerard Magliocca, Patents, Meet Napster: 3D Printing and the Digitization of Things, 102 Georgetown Law Journal 1691 (2014)
  3. Liza Vertinsky & Todd M. Rice, Thinking about Thinking Machines: Implications of Machine Inventors for Patent Law, 8 B.U. Sci. & Tech L.J. 2 (2002)
  4. Walter Hickey, It is Now Possible to Download an AR-15 Assault Rifle Using 3D Printing, Business Insider, August 10, 2012, at http://www.businessinsider.com/it-is-now-possible-to-download-and-3d-print-a-working-ar-15-assault-rifle-2012-8
  5. Mark Lemley, IP in a World Without Scarcity, NYU L. Rev. (forthcoming 2015), at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2413974&rec=1&srcabs=2358233
  6. Nora Freeman Engstrom, 3-D Printing And Product Liability – Identifying The Obstacles, http://www.pennlawreview.com/online/162-U-Pa-L-Rev-Online-35.pdf

 

10. Robots and Privacy (4/06/2015)

  1. Ryan Calo, Robots and Privacy, in Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics 187-202 (Patrick Lin et al. eds., MIT Press 2012), at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1599189
  2. Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001)
  3. United States v. Jones, 132 S.Ct. 945 (2012)
  4. Riley v. California, 134 S.Ct. 2473 (2014)
  5. Margot Kaminski, Drone Federalism: Civilian Drones and the Things They Carry, 4 California Law Review Circuit 57 (2013)

 

11. Human-Robot Social Issues I: Protecting Humans: Work and the Economy (4/13/2015)

  1. Tyler Cowen, The Robots are Here, Politico, at http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/11/the-robots-are-here-98995.html#.VL7FKEfF-3I
  2. Rick Wartzman, The Robot Invasion, The American Prospect, at http://prospect.org/article/robot-invasion
  3. How Technology is Destroying Jobs, David Rotman (2013), at http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/
  4. Why Workers Are Losing the War Against Machines (2011), at http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/why-workers-are-losing-the-war-against-machines/247278/
  5. Claire Cain Miller, As Robots Grow Smarter, American Workers Struggle to Keep Up, at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/upshot/as-robots-grow-smarter-american-workers-struggle-to-keep-up.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1
  6. Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, The Future Of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs To Computerisation?, at http://www.futuretech.ox.ac.uk/sites/futuretech.ox.ac.uk/files/The_Future_of_Employment_OMS_Working_Paper_1.pdf
  7. Tom Meltzer, Robot doctors, online lawyers and automated architects: the future of the professions?, The Guardian, at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/15/robot-doctors-online-lawyers-automated-architects-future-professions-jobs-technology

 

12. Human-Robot Social Issues II: Protecting Humans: Love, Caretaking, & Sex (4/20/2015)

  1. Robot Sex and Marriage: Will Society Accept It?, at http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/05/robot_sex_and_marriage_will_society_accept_it_.html
  2. Paul Waldman, Here’s Why One Day You Will Probably Fall In Love With a Robot, The American Prospect, at http://prospect.org/article/heres-why-one-day-you-will-probably-fall-love-robot
  3. Sex Robots and Roboticization of Consent, available at http://robots.law.miami.edu/program/ (selection TBD)
  4. Paro the Robo-Seal Aims to Comfort Elderly, but Is It Ethical? Wall Street Journal (June 21, 2010), at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704463504575301051844937276.html

13. Human-Robot Social Issues III: Protecting Robots (4/27/2015)

  1. Kate Darling, Extending Legal Rights to Robots (available on course site)

<>2.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/29/science/making-robots-more-like-us.html