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LEGAL PERSONALITY OF ROBOTS AND ITS IMPACT ON LIABILITY RULES

Kosjenka Dumancic, B. Preloznjak

Abstract

A growing number of areas of daily lives are increasingly affected by robotics. In the European Union (hereinafter: EU) the fast-evolving field of robotics initiated public debate regarding legal framework for the robots. In order to ensure that robots are and will remain in the service of humans, some key legal issues such as human physical safety, liability exposure and privacy/data protection need to be resolved. If we take an example of liability issue, the question is can we hold robots liable for damage when something goes wrong with an autonomous system? Under the current legal framework, robots cannot be held liable per se for acts or omissions that cause damage to third parties. In order to change that, the legal status of robots needs to be regulated. That is very important in cases where a robot can take autonomous decisions, as traditional liability chain is then insufficient to address the complex issue of identifying the party that should bear the burden of providing compensation for the damage caused. In order to analyse prospects of robotВ’s liability regulation within EU legal framework authors will discuss whether we can ascribe legal status to robots in order to allow them to be held liable for damages.

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