Robot Rules!

Brett Wilson judges the case for laws for robots.

- Brett Wilson

Some time in the near future your cat Tybalt, while sunning himself on the lawn, suffers a hair-raising experience which scars him for life. The first you know about it are the catcalls that alert you to a standoff between feline and machine, just before you glimpse Tybalt haring it for the catflap. Examining your poor moggy you realise that next door’s automated lawnmower, after forcing its way through a gap in the fence, has mistaken your cat for an unruly patch of couch grass, giving him the fade cut he never wanted.

You decide to sue. Poor Tybalt! His coat will never be the same; and there’s the PTSD to think about. The case seems cut and dried. Your lawyer, though, face like a prune, sighs and tells it straight. Things have changed, he says. The problem is not whether to sue, but who to sue. In the past you might have claimed that the manufacturer had overlooked a dangerous flaw in the lawnmower, or worse, seen one and ignored it. Tybalt would be rolling in catnip. Alternatively, your neighbour might be at fault if they had used the mower inappropriately, just like if they set off a firework and burned your shed down, or drove their car into your 4x4 while intoxicated. Tua culpa. But neither of those situations applies anymore. You see, he explains, your machine is a snowflake. Not the atmosphere-susceptible delinquent of teenage parlance, he qualifies. He means an actual snowflake.