Thomas Burri

Special Issue on the Man and the Machine ∙ Introduction to the Special Issue on the Man and the Machine

This special issue assembles five articles ensuing from a conference on “The Man and the Machine: When Systems Take Decisions Autonomously”, which took place on June 26 and 27, 2015, at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. The aim of the conference was to explore the broader implications of artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomous robots and vehicles. Alphabet’s Deep Mind is just one example about whomwe know, at least a little, and who, we are told, will be good.1Autonomous vehicles are also about to enter the market and our phones have begun to verbalize at us. Private drones are being regulated by the US Federal Aviation Administration.2 The five papers in this special issue address some of the legal issues the broader development raises.3 The first article is on “The Implications of Modern Business-Entity Law for the Regulation of AutonomousSystems” and iswrittenbyShawnBayern.4 It essentially proposes a way for individuals, based on the law as it stands now, to grant legal personality to autonomous systems. The proposal is to encase autonomous systems in a limited liability corporation the aim and objective of which is determined by the system itself. The ties between the members and the corporation are then severed. Consequently, the system becomes fully autonomous within the legal sense. Bayern’s proposal is made on the basis of US law, but the idea at the heart of it is of broader interest, namely also from a European perspective. In a similar vein, the EU RoboLaw “Guidelines on Regulating Robotics” from 20145 suggest that in limited circumstances robots might be granted a legal status similar to a corporation. This could allow them to performsometransactions, suchasentering into contracts. The second article, “Autonomous Systems as Creative Agents under the EU Framework for Intellectual Property”, by Madeleine de Cock Buning, lays out in detail the challenges that arise when systems create works of art autonomously, without a human author having a controlling hand in this process. She draws on a number of legal orders and on the way the lawhistorically dealtwithnew technologies, such as photography, to show how these challenges are and could be addressed. The third article, “The Pros and Cons of Legal Automation and Its Governance”, by Ugo Pagallo and MassimoDurante, looksat autonomoussystems from a more theoretical perspective. It discusses the governance issues that autonomous systems pose aswell as the most recent case law. The fourth articles discusses what comes to the mind of most when they hear of autonomous sys-