MEP Mady Delvaux (S&D, Luxembourg) pointed out in a press release on Friday 13 April that the European Parliament never intended to give human rights to robots, and had simply asked the European Commission to analyse the consequences of such rights and to explore the related legal issues.
The MEP was responding to an open letter to the Commission signed by 162 experts, which was very critical of an own initiative report by Delvaux adopted in 2017, which formulated a raft of recommendations about civil law rules for robotics (see EUROPE 11727).
The experts consider that the creation of a legal status for robots would be based on the error that robot liability would be impossible to prove. The experts say that technically speaking, such a legal status would be biased because it would overestimate robots’ capabilities and displays superficial understanding and a view "deformed by science fiction".
The MEP says that the experts have only read part of her own initiative report, which is all the more surprising in that we understand that some of the experts in question contributed to the work leading up to the report.
Delvaux says the report in no ways calls for the creation of a legal status, but asks the European Commission to study the implications of such status. She explains that her personal preference was not for a legal status but rather a risk-based approach of the person responsible being the person best placed to prevent risk (paragraph 53 of the report).
On 25 April, the European Commission is due to unveil an initiative on artificial intelligence (AI0 announcing that by mid-2019 an ethics charter for AI would be established along with fundamental rights (see EUROPE 11978).
The experts’ open letter can be found at: http://www.robotics-openletter.eu/ (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)