Nathalie Nevejans (Université d'Artois) animera le séminaire du 1er décembre.
In recent years, progress of robotics and artificial intelligence are prodigious. All the civil robotics (surgical robots, industrial robots, robots for elderly, services robots, …) and military robotics (war robots, war drones, …) renew the debates. However, the development of autonomous robotics will have an important impact in economics, social, legal and ethics terms.
Autonomous robotics has drawn the attention of the European legislator, as it is shown by the European Resolution on European Civil Law Rules in Robotics of the 16 of February, 2017. However, this text, without any obligatory value, causes more difficulties than it solves. Indeed, it tends to deform the state‐of‐the‐art in robotics and to adopt a vision tinged with science fiction.
By limiting the reflection on the Law and the Ethics of the civil robots, we notice that they pose several difficulties very delicate as well as legal than ethical, especially: Should we grant legal status for autonomous robots? How to determine who is responsible for the damages caused by a robot? How will ethical issues affect the whole civil society when using autonomous robots?
It is essential that all these difficulties should be understood right now because of their inevitable impact on society, and on the human being himself.
Nathalie Nevejans is Professor and Chairholder in Artificial Intelligence (Artois University Chair, France), and Member of the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) Ethics Committee (COMETS, France). She is also a European Parliament expert. She went on further to create a new discipline of Law and Ethics in Robotics (Treatise of Law and Ethics of Civil Robotics/Traité de droit d’éthique de la robotique civile, 2017). Author of numerous papers, participating in events from both the academic world and various professional sectors (industry, health, insurance), she is one of the few European specialists in the Law and Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Emerging Technologies. Her interdisciplinary publications include, for example, S. O'Sullivan, N. Nevejans, and alii. « Legal, Regulatory, and Ethical Frameworks for development of Standards in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Robotic Surgery », The International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery, 2018.