Postgraduate Course: Robotics and the Law (LAWS11330)
Course Outline
| School | School of Law |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Credits | 20 |
| Home subject area | Law |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | The course introduces students to the legal and wider regulatory issues raised by the increasing use of automated and autonomous devices. As we increasingly allow machines to make decisions for us, this raises significant problems for our legal concepts of liability, responsibility legal personhood. Since robots rely on sensors to perform their tasks, they also raise issues of data protection and privacy. The legal issues raised by autonomous agents that conclude contracts online on behalf of their owner will be discussed, as will be the regulatory issues of care/companion robots in a medical setting, self-driving cars and the automated city; and military applications such as drones. The course covers both embodied artificial intelligent systems ('robots') and non-embodied devices ('autonomous agents'). Legal ramifications of these technologies are studied also with a view on their political, economic and ethical implications. Special attention will be given to efforts to create an international legal regime and associated proposals to standardise certain legal responses to robot technology globally.
In addition to gaining a deeper understanding of the specific legal issues that are created by a number of particularly important applications of robotics and autonomous agent technology, students will also acquire a generic understanding of the types of problems that are raised by autonomous technologies for the theory of regulation. They will gain an understanding of the limits of regulation by law and the ability to evaluate comparatively other modes of regulation for a given problem.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Delivery period: 2014/15 Semester 1, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Learn enabled: No |
Quota: 25 |
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Web Timetable |
Web Timetable |
| Course Start Date |
15/09/2014 |
| Breakdown of Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Additional Notes |
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| Breakdown of Assessment Methods (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
1. Knowledge and understanding:
- Broad understanding of the legal issues created by autonomous technologies, and an awareness of the range of legal issues that are affected.
- Extensive knowledge of existing legal responses, both through legislation and relevant case law.
- Knowledge of legislative initiatives and reform proposals both nationally and internationally
- Extensive, detailed and critical knowledge of the legal issues created by one or more applications of autonomous technologies for law and legal regulation
- Rigorous Understanding of the interaction between economic, psychological, political , societal and ethical issues
that regulators face when dealing with autonomous technologies
- Understanding of the different modes of regulation that are available for regulators tackling autonomous technologies, and their interaction
- Critical awareness of emerging issues that are likely require legal solutions in the near future
2. Skills and abilities in Research and Enquiry:
- The ability to carry out independent research in the intersection between law and technology
- Ability to acquire information from disciplines and jurisdictions other than one¿s own quickly and reliably
- Ability to identify, conceptualise and define new and abstract problems and issues that rapid technological change may create for the legal profession and the justice system
3. Skills and abilities in Personal and Intellectual Autonomy:
- Critically evaluating existing and proposed legal solutions for emerging technologies
- Forming and defending argumentatively opinions in fields where the law is not yet settled
- Ability to develop and argumentatively defend creative solutions for new problems caused by technological change
4. Skills and abilities in Communication:
- Ability to communicate ideas to audiences from other disciplines and jurisdictions as well as to one¿s own
- Ability to use advanced ICT tools efficiently to communicate complex states of affairs to a variety of audiences
5. Skills and abilities in Personal Effectiveness:
- Working to tight deadlines
- Balancing conflicting demands on time management
Technical/practical skills:
- Ability to use a broad range of digital resources and databases efficiently
- Carry out advanced information retrieval and use appropriate tools for it, including social media tools
- Ability to use computer enhanced communication tools such as wikis and other social media tools
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Assessment Information
| One Essay, 4000 words (70%); one piece of assessed course work (30%) (which will require students to make use of some form of ICT tool, e.g. writing a Wikipedia entry, blogging on a topic discussed in class or compiling a twitter book); |
Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
Indicative teaching programme
1) Robots, autonomous agents and the law: a historical introduction
2) The science of robotics: basic concepts and ideas
3) Machine imitating man: an introduction to Artificial intelligence
4) Unembodied AIs and private law: automated contract formation, online auctions and virtual companies
5) Unembodied AI and criminal law: online surveillance
6) Embodied AI: Driverless cars and their regulation
7) Embodied AI: Drones and other military applications: robots in the law of armed conflicts
8) Embodied AI: care robots and the elderly: medical law and ethics meets robotics
9) Regulating robots: paradigms and projects
10) emerging issues in robotics and the law
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| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
Not entered |
| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
One 2 hour seminar per week |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Mr Burkhard Schafer
Tel: (0131 6)50 2035
Email: B.Schafer@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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