Vviewpoints
DOI: 10.1145/1787234.1787248
Viewpoint
Rights for Autonomous
Artificial Agents?
The growing role of artificial agents necessitates modifying
legal frameworks to better address human interests.
It Is A commonplace occur- rence today that computer programs, which arise from the area of research in ar- tificial intelligence known
as intelligent agents, function autonomously and competently; 1 they
work without human supervision,
learn, and, while remaining ‘just
programmed entities’, are capable of
doing things that might not be anticipated by their creators or users.
In short, leaving philosophical
debates about the true meaning of
‘autonomy’ aside, they are worthy
of being termed ‘autonomous artificial agents’.a And on present trends,
we, along with our current social and
economic institutions, will increasingly interact with them. They will buy
goods for us, possibly after carrying
out negotiations with other artificial
agents, process our applications for
credit cards or visas, and even make
decisions on our behalf (in smarter
versions of governmental systems
such as TIERS2 and in the ever-increas-ing array of systems supporting legal
decision-making3). As we interact with
these artificial agents in unsupervised
settings with no human mediators,
their increasingly sophisticated functionality and behavior create awkward
a Jim Cunningham has pointed out that a certain degree of autonomy is present in all
programs; consider Web servers or email
daemons for instance. One might think of intelligent agents as a move toward one end of
the spectrum of autonomy.
The artificial agent
is better understood
as the means by
which the contract
offer is constituted.
questions. If it is a reasonable assumption that the degree of their autonomy will increase, how should we
come to treat these entities?
Societal norms and the legal system
constrain our interactions with other
human beings (our fellow citizens or
people of other nations), other legal
persons (corporations and public bod-
ies), or animal entities. There are, in
parallel, rich philosophical discussions
of the normative aspects of these inter-
actions in social, political, and moral
philosophy, and in epistemology and
metaphysics. The law, taking its cues
from these traditions, strives to pro-
vide structure to these interactions. It
answers questions such as: What rights
do our fellow citizens have? How do
we judge them liable for their actions?
When do we attribute knowledge to
them? What sorts of responsibilities
can (or should) be assigned to them?
It is becoming increasingly clear these
questions must be addressed with
respect to artificial agents. 4 So, what
place within our legal system should
these entities occupy so that we may do
justice to the present system of socio-
economic-legal arrangements, while
continuing to safeguard our interests?
The contracting Problem
Discussing rights and responsibilities
for programs tends to trigger thoughts
of civil rights for robots, or taking them
to trial for having committed a crime or
something else similarly fanciful. This
is the stuff of good, bad, and simplistic
science fiction. But the legal problems
created by the increasing use of artificial agents today are many and varied.
Consider one problem, present in e-commerce: If two programs negotiate
a deal (that is, my shopping bot makes
a purchase for me at a Web site), does
that mean a legally binding contract is
formed between their legal principals
(the company and me)?
A traditional statement of the requirements of a legally valid contract is
that “there must be two or more separate and definite parties to the contract; those parties must be in agreement i.e., there must be a consensus
ad idem; those parties must intend to
create legal relations in the sense the
promises of each side are to be enforceable simply because they are contractual promises; the promises of each party
must be supported by consideration
i.e., something valuable given in return
for the promise.” 5
