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In January, the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliamentput forward a draft report urging the creation and adoption of EU-wide rules to corral the myriad issues arising from the widespread use of robots and AIa development, it says, is poised to unleash a new industrial revolution.

Its an interesting read, and a valiant effort to get a handle on how to standardize and regulate the ever-expanding robot universe: drones, industrial robots, care robots, medical robots, entertainment robots, robots in farmingyou name it, theyre all inthere.

Beginning with Frankensteins monster, Pragues golem, and Karel apeks robot and ending with a code of ethics for robotics engineers and some daunting lists of shoulds for robot designers and end users, the 22-page worry catalog toggles between practical concerns about liability, accountability, and safetywhos going to pay when a robot or a self-driving car has an accident?and far-ranging ones about when robots will need to be designated electronic persons, and how we will ensure that their creators make them good ones.

The practical concerns addressed include a call for the creation of a European agency for robotics and artificial intelligence to support the European Commission in its regulation- and legislation-making efforts. Definitions and classifications of robots and smart robots need to be detailed, and a robot registration system described. Interoperability and access to code and intellectual property rights are addressed. Even the impact of robotics on the workforce and the economy are flagged for oversight.

The electronic persons discussion, tucked halfway through the report, caught everyones attentionperhaps because its much more fun to catastrophize about HAL 9000 and Skynet than it is to ponder robot insurance requirements. And because personhoodwhat it legally means to be recognized as a personissuch a loaded topic.

Mady Delvaux, a Luxembourg member of the EP and the reports author, attempted to clarify the designation of what a limited electronic personality would be, saying that it would be comparable to the standing that corporations have as legal persons, making it possible for them to conduct business, limit liability, and sue or be sued for damages.

But we havent finished addressing legal definitions of personhood for women, children, and higher-order animals like chimpanzees yet. Are we really ready to take on robot e-personhood?

I called Joanna Bryson, reader in the department of computer science at the University of Bath, in England, and a working member of the IEEE Ethically Aligned Design project, to ask her what she thought, having just read the Reddit Science Ask Me Anythingshe did about the future of AI and robotics. Her response? As soon as you put the word person in the draft, youre probably in trouble.

She told me about Australian law professor S.M.Solaimans article Legal Personality of Robots, Corporations, Idols and Chimpanzees: A Quest for Legitimacy,which argues that corporations are legal persons but AIs and chimpanzees arent. Legal persons must know and be able to claim their rights: They must be able to assert themselves as members of a society, which is why nonhuman animals (andsome incapacitated humans), and artifacts like AIs should not, according to Solaiman, be considered legal persons.

But then Bryson said something I had not considered. Since robots are ownedthey are in a sense our machine slaveswe can choose not to build robotsthat would mind being owned. We arent obliged to build robots that we end up feeling obliged to, says Bryson. So instead of assuming that an ethically challenged future saturated with sentient machines is inevitable, we could choose to maintain agency over the machines we are building and defy the technological imperative. Could we do it? Or are we so in thrall to the notion of creating artificial life, monsters, and golems, that its irresistible?

This article appears in the March 2017 print issue as Do We Have to Build Robots That Need Rights?

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