Happy Holidays! More Robot Gelt…

You have probably noticed that this week’s video feeds are dedicated to the festive spirit of the season vs. our typical entries highlighting the articles below.  In my last post spoke, I spoke about the Chanukah miracle of 2010 with the Stuxnet malware attack on Iran’s nuclear establishments.  Today, I turn my attention to rights of robots everywhere, naughty or nice.

Later this year the University of Miami will host the first annual legal conference entitled,”We Robot: Inaugural Conference on Legal and Policy Issues Relating to Robotics.”  At this event legal scholars and robotic engineers will debate such issues as side-by-side workplace environments to autonomous robots that go wild (think SkyNet).  Of course, more stale topics like intellectual property and data collection will be covered as well.

This conference is good and bad news for robotics.  The good news is that it has caught the attention of the legal eagles, the bad news is it has caught the attention of the legal profession.