I interviewed Prof. Ryan Calo who is the Lane Powell and D. Wayne Gittinger Associate Professor at the University of Washington School of Law. He is a faculty co-director (with Batya Friedman and Tadayoshi Kohno) of the University of Washington Tech Policy Lab, a unique, interdisciplinary research unit that spans the School of Law, Information School, and Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. Professor Calo’s research on law and emerging technology appears or is forthcoming in leading law reviews (California Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, and Columbia Law Review) and technical publications (MIT Press, Nature, Artificial Intelligence) and is frequently referenced by the mainstream media (NPR, New York Times, Wall Street Journal).
Pleasant readings…
Cetin: Lets begin with a personal question. Robots and law… It has become quite a popular topic. How do you evaluate the development of this field?
Calo: I am very happy with the trajectory of robotics law and policy in the past ten years. It went from being a bit of a fringe conversation, at least in the United States, to a mature sub-discipline with sophisticated theory and concrete examples. I think that We Robot—the annual conference you’ve attended—has been instrumental.
Cetin: : Countries have gradually started to determine AI policies. What do you think about the effects of the democratic and economic structure of countries on AI policies?
Calo: Good question. Some countries are seeing AI as an opportunity to be more globally competitive, whereas others are worried about preserving their edge. The best policies in my view think about the social impacts of AI on their own society while understanding AI as a global enterprise. I don’t like the rhetoric of AI as a “race” that one or more countries will “win.” This kind of thinking leads to harmful shortcuts and hinders cooperation.
Cetin: Developing countries import the technological products largely, and these technological products find a great demand in the domestic market. How do you think this situation affects AI regulations in developing countries?
Calo: I think it’s important to keep in mind that technology brings with it cultural and other assumptions. So when developed economies export technology to less developed ones, there is the potential that the values of those developed nations will accompany the product. Thus I think the AI policy of developing countries should include best practices around procurement. What I mean is that developing countries, though they may not be developing AI at the same rates, still have market power and can insist that the products they import respect their values and well-being. No entity should import AI without insisting on this.
Cetin: Comparing anglo-saxon law system with continental law system, what can the regulatory challenges of AI and robots be?
Calo: I actually think the challenges of robotics law are pretty consistent across common law and civil law. They include assessing responsibility for harm, privacy, and questions of control and ownership. It may be that common law proves more flexible in reacting to new technology but there’s no inherent reason that would be the case.
Cetin: Especially in recent years, technology companies have taken steps in artificial intelligence and ethics. As an example, one of them was Google. What should be the most important issue for companies when determining policy on artificial intelligence and ethics?
Calo: I have long argued that we cannot emphasize ethics to the exclusion of law and policy. This phenomenon has become known as “ethics washing,” which captures the intuition many have that companies would rather craft their own ethical guidelines than face mandatory rules from government. So while the content of ethics programs is very important, so is the question of legitimacy.
With this understanding in place, companies should emphasize the ways that they harms and benefits of AI are often unevenly distributed and have processes in place to co-design AI with all stakeholders and assess the social impacts of new technologies, especially on the most vulnerable. This is more important in my opinion than mere transparency.
Cetin: The European Commission recently adopted the Cyber Security Act. This is an important step about information security in EU. What about the US? How do you evaluate the approachment of the US to cyber security in the terms of private sector and government applications?
Calo: I worry that the definition of hacking is outdated in light of AI, especially adversarial machine learning. I wrote a paper about this with colleagues in computer science entitled Is Tricking a Robot Hacking? We argue that manipulating AI by tricking it is becoming just as dangerous as breaking into a computer system. We need ways to make AI more robust against attack while also protecting researchers who are testing AI for insecurity or bias.
Cetin: CCPA is the one of the most important regulations in California. But still there is no federal regulation on data protection in the US. What are the effects of this situation for individuals and companies?
Calo: I don’t know. Lots of people and groups, including companies themselves, are calling for federal baseline data protection in the United States. I think everyone is tired of the uncertainty and that fear and instability that results. I don’t the CCPA is perfect but I credit California for jump-starting the conversation in the U.S.
Cetin: I am sure this question is asked to you so much, but I ask it again for the robotic.legal readers. What are your suggestions to university students who want to improve themselves in robot law?
Calo: Great question! I would say to attend or at least watch and follow We Robot. That is where this conversation is most vibrant. But also, seek out people in other disciplines. If you’re a roboticist, find the law and social science people. If you’re in law or social science, talk to the robotics and AI students and faculty. As I say often, very few important questions exist that can be resolved by reference to any single disciplines.
Thanks for your always excellent questions, Selin, and for educating people about about robotics law!
Emerging Technologies from Cyber Security Perspective
We talked about cyber security and emerging technologies with Burak Sadıç who is the partner at Deloitte Turkey. Sadıç has over twenty years of consulting and management experience.
Pleasant readings…
Çetin: Let’s begin with a personal question, in the face of the risks of the technological products we use in daily life, what are your solutions as a user?
Sadıç: As a cyber risk professional, I am trying to use technology as less as I can 🙂 Taking the joke aside, below are my personal preferences as a user:
– Use a different and a complex password for every application and system.
– Use a secure password management application, to store all the passwords mentioned above.
– Use two factor authentication, whenever it is applicable.
– Limit sharing my actual geographic location, as much as possible.
– Be paranoid about opening attachments or clicking links that is sent to me via e-mail or messaging or through social media. And if I am really curious about these attachments or links then try to open them in a “safe” environment.
Çetin: Well, nowadays which cyber security threats do companies face? When you compare with the past, what are the changes in the risk management solutions that insurance companies offer, especially with the development of artificial intelligence?
Sadıç: If we think of cyber security as a book, we now are at the end of the first chapter or at the beginning of the final chapter. With Internet becoming ubiquitous and with connected devices all around (i.e. Internet of Everything) the cyber security threats for companies or individuals are only limited with our imagination. But in a nutshell, business interruption and data breach are the top most threats that the companies are facing nowadays. It is too early to comment on the potential effects of the developments of AI on cyber insurance, in my opinion.
Çetin: What are the positive and negative reflections of artificial intelligence usage in the insurance sector?
Sadıç: AI will change all industries, and insurance industry is not an exception. Imagine a scenario like below:
When you are involved in a traffic accident, your connected car is informing the police, hospital and the insurance company at the same time. While the police and the healthcare professionals are helping you and other potential victims’, your insurer is also determining the level of damage to your car. Towing contractor is automatically called, if there is a need and also the level of damage and the potential repair costs are already calculated. So, within minutes everything is sorted out with robotic process automation and AI.
Çetin: Artificial intelligence applications developed to detect cyber attacks began to spread. How do you evaluate the future of these applications?
Sadıç: AI is an imperative part of the future in cyber defense. The complexity of the current infrastructures makes it really hard for the human to grasp the situation, even with the aid of state of the art automation technologies. But, there is also the flip side of the coin. The attackers will also use AI in further sophisticating their offense. Hence, in future it will both be a human and AI warfare on the cyber grounds.
Çetin: Turkey facing cyber security threats, for better utilization of artificial intelligence solutions, what kind of steps should be taken?
Sadıç: Turkey is late in the race, but both the private and the public players are making bold steps to keep up to the speed of the cyber arms race. In my opinion, the first step in the more effective usage of AI is understanding what really is AI and acting accordingly.
Çetin: In the legal sense, within the framework of regulations in Turkey, do you think what has been done is enough in the face of developments in the field of cyber security?
Sadıç: KVKK (Turkish Data Protection Law) and specifically the article 12, and most specifically the data breach notification clause is a late but a very important step for cyber security. The new draft from BRSA and various industry regulations and guidelines are also very promising developments. I am not a legal expert, but the current framework seems promising for dealing with the ever changing realities in cyber security arena, as long as the respective authorities keeps developing and enriching the framework with an ever increasing speed.
I interviewed Richard Kelley. He is the lead engineer for the University of Nevada’s autonomous vehicle research. He is also one of the lead investigators for Nevada’s Intelligent Mobility Initiative, a research project that explores the application of artificial intelligence to transportation problems. He is currently working with his students to program a Lincoln MKZ sedan to drive itself around Reno and Lake Tahoe.
Pleasant readings…
Cetin: Shall we begin with a general question? What will be the potential benefits of autonomous vehicles? Why do we need them?
Kelley: I think that everyone who works on autonomous vehicles (AVs) does so at least in part because they believe that a future with self-driving vehicles will be a safer future. Most accidents today are caused by human error, and autonomous vehicles have the potential to elimate that entire source of accidents. But beyond the safety case, autonomous vehicles represent a key step forward for artificial intelligence. Thus far, most autonomous robots have been deployed to solve very simple tasks in relatively constrainted environments (think: vacuuming a house). It may not seem like it, but getting to the point where we have reliable vacuum robots is actually a tremendous technical achievement – it took decades to go from the lab to the living room. Think about how much harder driving a car is compared to vacuuming a house. Getting to fully autonomous cars — cars that can operate outside in the real world where all kinds of crazy things can happen — is requiring roboticists and AI experts to really push the limits of what AI technology can do, and will lead to all kinds of benefits for society as the technology diffuses into our daily lives.
Cetin: There are several criticisms about autonomous vehicles on the risks of hacking, terrorism, privacy and security. What do you think about these risks? Can these risks be overcome?
Kelley: All of these issues are critically important to address. One of the tragedies of the Internet and World Wide Web is that security was almost an afterthought, rather than a focus from the beginning. We have a chance to avoid making the same mistake with autonomous and connected vehicles. To deal with security issues (like hacking and terrorism), it will probably be necessary to rethink how cars are built. These days, a car consists of many dozens of microcontrollers and computers connected via a network protocol (CAN) that was designed in the mid 1980s, a few years before the first computer worm was even invented. We have to accept that car is a computer network that happens to be on wheels, and work to develop new security systems that recognize and address that fact. But I think this is possible, and is something that the industry is working on as public awareness of the risks grows.
As far as privacy is concerned, I think society will need to learn about the modern threats to privacy from advanced technology, and based on that learning will need to decide, democratically, how to proceed. I think we’re starting to see this conversation unfold in the context of social media, so hopefully by the time autonomous cars are more common people will have a better sense of how they value their privacy. All of these challenges are substantial, but I remain hopeful that we can collectively choose a good path forward.
Cetin: What role should the state and private sector play in the development of this technology? Which one can be more useful?
Kelley: Both the state and the private sector are playing and will play essential roles in the future development of autonomous vehicle technology. I think the primary role of the state will be to create a beneficial regulatory environment – one that balances the safety concerns of the general public with the need of companies to exhaustively test their systems. At the same time, there are probably research questions that are too speculative for companies to work on, and there’s probably room for the state to fund research on those sorts of issues. As an example, very few autonomous vehicle companies are interested in technology for networked cities, because they want their systems to work without relying on public infrastructure. However, such infrastructure may have other benefits that the state could support research for. My team is currently working with the City of Reno and the State of Nevada to explore exactly how intelligent lidar networks can make cities safer and more responsive.
The primary job of the private sector will be to push core technical development forward. In the end I think both roles will end up being more less equally important.
Cetin: Whlie improving autonomous vehicles, what is the reflection of the rules of law and ethics?
Kelley: I think the main thing for autonomous vehicle companies to focus on is building systems that robustly follow the law. If they can do this, I think the vast majority of the “obvious” ethical concerns will be addressed.
Something I don’t think is helpful is the interest in “trolley problems.” Fortunately this interest seems to be waning.
Cetin: What legal considerations should we take as a priority in the development of this technology?
Kelley: One of the tricky things about traffic laws is that they were written with humans in mind. We often think of written traffic laws as precise objects, but when you really carefully read them, there’s a lot of room for interpretation. This is something that computers may have a hard time with, so we’re going to need to clarify our expectations regarding the exact capabilities of an autonomous car. For example, should AVs be able to read? It might sound funny, but a surprising amount of traffic control is done using written signs that can’t simply be memorized. If we decide that AVs need to be able to read, then what level of reading comprehension will we require? Should they be able to read at the level of a typical driver? That seems like a high standard, but the point is that we need to decide what our expectations of autonomous vehicles are when it comes to understanding the law.
At the same time, it would probably be helpful if governments could start to create a standard way to present their laws to make it easier for AVs and other robots to download and understand legal constraints. The laws themselves don’t have to be uniform, but ifthere were a standard machine-readable format for the laws of both Nevada (where I am from) and, say, California, then it would be much easier to build robots that could operate in both states.
Basically, I think we need to decide what the “driver’s test” for robots is going to look like. This is another area where governments and private companies can work together.
Cetin: Responsibility of autonomous vehicles in an accident is one of the popular debates. What do you think about this responsibility? For example, how should the responsibility problem be solved when a situation, not foreseen by the programmer, is realized?
Kelley: Overall, I think liability is one of the areas that will get *less* interesting as autonomous vehicles are perfected. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) conducted a comprehensive analysis from 2005 to 2007 to determine the causes of crashes in the US. NHTSA found that almost all (94%) crashes are caused by human error. Basically, humans making avoidably bad decisions. Once AVs can prevent this sort of crash, the remaining problems (that last 6%) will be easier to address. Because of the advanced sensors and AI in autonomous vehicles, even things like “wear and tear” that could cause a tire to burst on the road will likely be detected much earlier than they are now.
And even when there are crashes, they’ll probably be treated in much the same way that we treat airplane crashes. The so-called “black boxes” in each car involved in a crash will be taken from the scene and analyzed carefully by the government and AV manufacturers to make sure that similar crashes are prevented in the future.
Cetin: We know that there are 5 levels of autonomous cars. What could be the problems that a 5th level autonomous vehicle could create on a public road? How can they be overcome?
Kelley: To start I want to say that true “level 5 autonomy” – where you don’t even need a steering wheel and your car can go anywhere – is probably several years (or maybe even decades) away. But once we have that level of technology I think the questions shift away from “can we deploy this kind of car?” to “how do we best take advantage of this level of autonomy?” The role of autonomous systems is almost always to decrease the cost of some activity. In the case of level 5 AVs, it’s to decrease the cost of physical transportation. This will change economic incentives, and may even increase the number of cars on the road. The challenge will be to make sure that autonomy doesn’t lead to more congestion or longer commutes.
The other major issue is employment. For example, in the US a large number of people are employed as truck drivers. We’ll need to make sure that the development of level 5 technology doesn’t rapidly put all of those people out of work. We may also need to retrain drivers to do other kinds of jobs.
Fortunately the path from current technology to level 5 autonomy will take some time, and we’ll be able to start working on these issues before they become absolutely critical.
Cetin: How can the prejudices of manual drivers against autonomous vehicles be overcome in large cities where traffic is heavy, and some vehicles are not autonomous?
Kelley: Dealing effectively with humans is, in my mind, one of the last and largest technical challenges remaining for AVs. There’s still a lot of research required to make autonomous cars “socially intelligent.” This is in fact where most of my research is focused at the moment, and I think the answer is that we need to look to game theory. Traditionally, game theory has been used to analyze well-defined competitive situations with a finite number of outcomes. But there are ways to extend game theoretic analysis to the driving domain, and I’m currently working with several of my students to make that kind of analysis workable on our car. Right now autonomous vehicles behave too conservatively because they mostly don’t model the intentions of other drivers, so they can’t reliably predict how those drivers will react. My team is building “intent recognition” systems that are good at predicting how people will behave, and we are incorporating those systems into the decision-making software of our vehicle so that it is less likely to be bullied by aggressive human drivers.
It will also be important for cars to be able to adapt their behavior dynamically as driving conditions change, and to combine fast machine learning with robust safety guarantees. This is another area with a lot of research potential.
Cetin: I want to ask a futuristic question. How could the future progress of autonomous vehicles be? Do you foresee any software above 5th level for autonomous vehicles?
Kelley: Even though level 5 autonomy is still a long ways off, I think that’s really just the beginning for autonomous vehicles. I expect there will be a whole economy built on top of AVs, much in the same way a complex economy has grown around the Internet and the Web. The economics of transportation networks will need to be rethought, for example. And once cars can drive autonomously, there will be a need to carefully design the in-cabin user experience of these vehicles. We’ll find new ways to be entertained while our cars drive us around (hopefully with fewer ads than we have on the Web today).
More broadly, I think that the technology that will enable level 5 autonomy will be useful in more than just cars. By the time we have level 5 autonomous cars, the same technology will also probably drive smaller autonomous delivery vehicles, for example.
Cetin: Finally, can there be a collective and central software that can run multiple or all autonomous vehicles? What would be the consequences?
Kelley: This is a really interesting question! In the realm of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) there has already been a lot of research on centralized traffic management systems, primarily through NASA’s UAS Traffic Management (UTM) project. I spent several years working with the State of Nevada to participate in UTM research, and I think the work that NASA is doing there is a template for how centralized robot control networks will develop in every area where robotics becomes prevalent.I expect that individual companies will definitely have their own centralized systems for managing their fleets. Moreover, it may be possible for local governments to have a role here. There’s some evidence that centralized control of a lot of vehicles can be more efficient than decentralized approaches, so I would expect to see a lot of practical research and experimentation on this kind of question in the coming years.
Smart Technologies and New Perspective for Payment Systems
I interviewed Celal Cundoglu. He is the deputy managing director of the Interbank Card Center (BKM). We talked about the present and future of Blockchain and payment systems
Pleasant readings…
Cetin: Let’s start with a general question, when we consider the historical development of Blockchain system, what kind of reflections did this technology create?
Cundoğlu: The main popularization of Blockchain was in 2008, with an article, by Satoshi, on the distributed structure of money about Bitcoin. Especially the cryptocurrency part attracted attention. When looking at the real level, we realized that the underlying blockchain was a reliance (trust) machine. So, it does not necessarily have to be a cryptocurrency on this. In the world, many business processes are carried out on paper or on a pier to pier single-sided database. They are either contracts or they are based on such a central structure that allows the parties that work with each other to trust each other. However, Blockchain uses the power of cryptography to create a technical possibility and reduce the cost of trust. Slowly, we started looking into whether we could use this system called “Blockchain” to solve our existing problems, including the business world and, of course, the banks, and whether we could create new business forms. There are no standards at the moment, each consortium is trying to set its own standard to solve its problems. In this way, a framework is being created. In the future, when these have matured enough, some structures that will respond to the relevant sectors will be brought to the scene. At the basis of the effort was a brand new machine of trust. In the past, the tool of the trust was the contracts or promises, today it is mathematics. With Blockchain, everyone can keep their own records and nobody can object to it as everyone on the network sees it. Many new business models can be built on this.
Cetin: What other areas can it be reflected to?
Cundoglu: Let’s assume, a bank in the middle of Turkey produced a product, and has sold it to U.S.A. This product must travel to U.S.A.. It will go to a port, where it will be loaded in a container, but there will be different products in that container, and then the container will be loaded on a ship. This ship will perhaps go to Italy and the container will be loaded there on to a larger ship. There are a whole lot paperwork at all of these transition points. Many parties need to approve these operations. The reason of this is the providing the trust. If we can give another example, think of a building, the municipality will go on a tender and give it to a company to build it, but the municipality needs to trust the company, so it wants a bank guarantee. Therefore, the bank creates a trust relationship between the body giving the project and the one building the project. Even this is a type of process that can actually be done with smart contracts. Apart from this, the use of this technology can be something that does not exist today. For example, we can think of a device, with sensors on it, orders something when a certain limit is reached, or when the drug is brought to a certain level, when the warehouse is running down, and the order is made with an automatic contract.Hence, it can be adapted many sectors.
Cetin: How can we assess Blockchain in terms of credit cards?
Cundoglu: Of course, it can be used on this matter as well. But when we inspect the point where there are problems, firstly we must ask the question whether we need it. Today, what kind of problems do you have when using credit or debit cards? Do you get any per occupations when you get close to the cashier’s desk? When you want to pay someone in cash, first you expect to have that much cash; but when you enter market you know that the card will work in the cachier’s desk. These are pretty matured payment networks. Perhaps this can be considered in the future when some problems arise, when the transaction volumes increases and when Blockchain matures. At this point, we need to solve the Blockchain problems that are not electronic but manual.
Blockchain, forces competitors to work together in governance.
Cetin: Does Blockchain have any drawbacks or advantages in terms of Competition Law?
Cundoglu: It is a situation about how governance is built. Blockchain means a distributed structure, which means that no company alone can create it. The structures competing with each other will have to build good governance. This governance structure can be built in an open or closed format. Today, however, the restrictive structure of competition can only continue for a certain period of time. Competition laws are quite mature in many other countries as well as in our country. The necessary steps will be taken in regard with these situations. For example, the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) can control the applications of the regulation. Let’s assume that a governance structure has been established with Blockchain so that the regulator can have a say here and that the technical and operational rules for entering that network are known and only those that catch up with it can be included in this Blockchain network. Thus, everything is regulated via an audit only. Hence, there will be approaches that the regulator will prefer. The engagement of the Regulator must be: “try it, struggle on it, then I will make an arrangement according to these”. It will be easy to inspect if a standard occurs and the regulator accepts it,
Cetin: Suppose that the personal data set is transferred to Blockchain, is this a disadvantage in terms of protection of personal data or can it be converted into an advantage if we think it is a closed structure?
Cunoglu: I can say neither of them Actually, it is related to which data you want to preserve in the network. We can take advantage of keeping the personal data in the blockchain. Let’s imagine that banks inter-built a Blockchain network on digital identity sharing. Celal, whom bank A has taken through the customer recognition process, wanted to receive services from Bank B with which, he had no banking relationship at all. In my opinion, the bank B does not have to go through a similar process where the bank A has already passed him through the customer diagnostic process, Banks must be able to share it through Blockchain. If the banks agree upon, each bank can encrypt the customer information and place it in this network. But I think that’s not the right thing to do, because you will keep the information of millions of people. Instead, if Celal’s identity, which is held in bank A, is sent to bank B, it may suffice to have a record of the transaction between these two banks. KVKK is a very valuable law, an important regulation on the protection of private and confidential information of people. However, personal data doesn’t need to be kept in Blockchain. You don’t contradict with KVKK, but it is important what you kept on Blockchain. Trying to keep personal data on the network can be problematic.
Cetin: How do you evaluate the use of Blockchain in terms of preventing money laundering and transparency of financial relations?
Cundoglu: I think, it is certainly useful. “pseudonym”. It is even said that Bitcoin is anonymous, but it is infact a pseudonym. The record has already been created and cannot be deleted.
Cetin: How do you evaluate the smart contract and AI in the terms of the present?
Cundoglu: Smart contracts are one of the using areas of Blockchain. We can create the smart contracts pretty complex. Even, there will be some Advanced AI’s that can create these smart contracts in the future.
Cetin: You have an application called “Keklik” in fighting with cash. Can you talk about it?
Cundoglu: The purpose of revealing “Keklik” is that we are having difficulty telling Blockchain on paper. What is distributed book structure, why do not need to central data base, what is smart contract, what is digital ID, what is cryptocurrency; we were explaining them verbally. Why is it our job to explain this?Because we want to make people live the experience of future of payments. Working with the banks, we want the bankers to imagine what problems Blockchain can solve. For that, we need to provide them that they understand the technology. This created the need to create a practice. The case we built was based on loyalty to the company. We were developing projects so that our friends use our different products and create feedbacks for them, and as a result that our products would mature.
Then, when we developed a project and the challenges were overcome, we thought of giving them cryptocurrency instead of giving them a theater ticket. We named it as “Keklik” (Grouse). And we created stores where they could spend those cryptcurrencies. They can spend here as much as they earn. Where’s the distributed book structure? We trisected the company and according to this, every floor is a company, so everybody can go shopping in their company and in others. These operations are encrypted in the distributed book structure. Since we can see the same “Keklik” structure in different databases, we also have a distributed book structure. In this context, I can log in every floor with a digital ID. In fact, we have also published a nice report on this project, which is available in BKM Express. Robotoic.Legal and SiberBülten readers can download this report in return for a 1 ₺ donation.This project has helped both our company and many players in the ecosystem, tounderstand these concepts.
CetinHow can the banking and finance sector customers can benefit from this technology in the services provided tothem?
Cundoglu:We will see many applications in the future. They make these processes much easier and more relaxing. For example, I think it can be used for international money transfers. This way, you will be able to monitor the progress of the money in transfer process.
Cetin: Should the internal dynamics in Turkey be encouraged to develop it, or what type of different steps should be taken?
Cundoglu: First, “which problem is to be solved” must be defined, then, “which minimum stakeholders should be present in this solution” should be taken into account. Stakeholders should demonstrate their commitment in carryingout this solution within their own ecosystem and in their own governance. Then the projects will become real, but a sort of ranking must take place. Also, as BKM, we are working on gathering banks around different projects. Every industry can benefit from this technology in Turkey, it’s also very important for edutaciton the people.
Cetin: How can we make it more active for common citizens?
Cundoglu: It is too early. As always I say, the problem must occur so that we want to find a solution. Are these problems business to business (B2B) or business to consumer (B2C)? First of all, B2B must be formulized. It’s not so easy to realize blockchain, many parties must come together and achieve a consensus on it. I assume that this year and the next , will be the years ecosystems start being created. Let me give you an example I face as a citizen. I have a child under 18. There are a lot of documents I need to put together to renew her passport. During this process, I have to go to the notary office and the bank. I have to get a student certificate from the school. Then we have to attend the appointment.All of these, are due to the lack of trust. The government’s identity document does not seem adequate due to lack of trust. I could solve this if I had a trust machine As this is a method to reduce the cost of trust, I reason that the citizen should head to it in the future.
I interviewed Lawyer Caglar Ersoy, who wrote his first book “Robots, Artificial Intelligence and Law” on robots and law in Turkey. We talked about the effects of robots and AI on Law.
Pleasant readings…
Cetin: How did the idea of writing a book on AI and Law was born?
Ersoy: At first, I was interested in the use of robotics in military areas.The reason for this was, the fact that they were already being used and they continue to advance. I began my researchs on this area and the subject expanded as I researched and this book occurred. I had aimed to write a paper but then I was finished it became a book ????
Cetin: Do you have any sections that you wanted to add to the book but did not?
Ersoy: Today, I wish that I had used more concrete examples. Especially, the culture has an important effect on this. This subject is endless, so you should limit and say what is enough.
Cetin:Do you think is there are any area that we must not use this technology under the law?
Ersoy: It is currently unacceptable that humans are completely removed from the cycle, I am one of the supporters of this option. I am thinking humans should not be sidelined. But programs’ advancement to next step depends on AI’s abilities. And it also depends on how far we can go to create an artificial intelligence. But for the time being, we should not place artificial intelligence into decisions regarding the human life. Especially in terms of international humanitarian law, the humans should not come out the cycle. And if it is paved the way for, the human element must not be eliminated. It is like to the nucleer frenzy, so humans should learn a lesson from this. But it should be banned until it becomes sophisticated.
Cetin:Do you think, a robot with an artificial intelligence can have a job on law profession? And can it become a lawyer?
Ersoy: I think it should. Maybe our workload will be reduced, we need to look on the bright side. Sure, it is not possible now, if you give a task to robot to meet a client, client might dismiss because of not being interested. But currently it is not possible today. They are more skilled than us on some subjects, for example analyzing. Of course, they will advance, but if emotional intelligence is not being designed by programmers, I do not think that especially a lawyer will be dismissed totally. Maybe it will be prensented as a right- the right to demand human intervention. It can be determined in the contract, so that, robot will assist a lawyer until a certain point, but after that the human intervention may be demanded if risk of error emerges afterwards. But it is not possible that the person humans will be completely out of the business. They are quite successful to suggest judge’s decisions; but many other factors are necessary as well in order that they replace judges. They will advance but probably we will not be able to see that they replace humans.
Cetin:Could a regulation exist among the robots themselves?
Ersoy: When they began to create languages among themselves, they can want an organization for themselves. If we do not hedge off or they overcome it, they can success in this. Maybe they have already established an organization, but we are not aware of it yet. If we succeed in the appropriate software, they can create this organisation. Attributing a personality is also an enforcement, this is also creating a organization. As their numbers increase, we will have to bring a system anyways. If we do not act first, they can try to do it better.
Cetin:We constantly talk about robots and AI. What do you think, they will think about humans?
Ersoy: I mentioned in the book. A fully developed artificial intelligence will understand that nothing useful will come out of humans for this world and will seek a way to escape from this world. I guess someone said something like: “They can not be seperate from us, because we create them and they contain something from us”. So, they are not able to think diffirentdifferent from us, unless they break this chain, then they certainly will think different from us. They look from above or from somewhere else, so they can move in a way that we cannot see.
Cetin:Should we be anxious about advancements in AI? Or we should be hopeful?
Ersoy: There are enough people, who warn about it. And they are important scientists. So, we should not be anxious at this point. They are right on this warning, because we face a technology that it can end badly when used by malicious people. At least, it seems to be that there is a control mechanism for the time being. There are important ethics and sociological developments on this topic and it is took precautions are taken. We will be dealing with “idiotic” artificial intelligences till there comes an advanced artificial intelligence on level to be scared from. They also might bare mistakes, but it seems to be prevented for now.
Cetin:What kind of regulations primarily are needed to be made regarding this area in Turkey?
Ersoy: It can be found in the fields of health and military in Turkey. There are a lot of investments in the healthcare sector and thus this condition affects the insurance sector. Operations can be done by robotic arms and maybe doctors will be just a supervisor. At this point, it is necessary to regulate the responsibility of the doctor, manufacturer and programmer. In general, it is the same in the world, first of all we need to regulate tort liability. Meanwhile, using the uses in the military will continues to advance. As a sector, health will be one of the first regulated fields, but then, especially tort liability will be needed for consideriation. There are discussions about personality but, it is so early for today. As soon as a gap appears, it needs to regulated quickly. But law will be always the late party. And sure, we can regulate by utilizing from our past accumulations.
Turkish
I interviewed Prof. Ryan Calo who is the Lane Powell and D. Wayne Gittinger Associate Professor at the University of Washington School of Law. He is a faculty co-director (with Batya Friedman and Tadayoshi Kohno) of the University of Washington Tech Policy Lab, a unique, interdisciplinary research unit that spans the School of Law, Information School, and Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. Professor Calo’s research on law and emerging technology appears or is forthcoming in leading law reviews (California Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, and Columbia Law Review) and technical publications (MIT Press, Nature, Artificial Intelligence) and is frequently referenced by the mainstream media (NPR, New York Times, Wall Street Journal).
