Stanford Center for Internet and Society

According to the Nevada Legislature's website, AB 511 "revis[ing] certain provisions governing transportation" passed the Assembly (36-6) and the Senate (20-1) and was signed into law by the governor this week.

Although I am aware of no law that prohibits driverless cars, this appears to be the first law officially to sanction the technology. Specifically, the law provides that the Nevada Department of Transportation "shall adopt regulations authorizing the operation of autonomous vehicles on highways within the State of Nevada." The law charges the Nevada DOT with setting safety and performance standards and requires it to designate areas where driverless cars may be tested. (Note that this could take some serious time: Japan, for instance, has been promising standards for personal robots for years and has yet to release them.)

Is it lawful for a car to drive itself? In the absence of any law to the contrary, it should well be. A new bill is working its way through the Nevada state legislature that would remove any doubt in that state. A.B. 511 directs the Nevada Department of Transportation to authorize autonomous vehicle testing in certain geographic areas of Nevada. Should vehicles meet Nevada DOT standards, they would be permitted to "operate on a highway."

The bill defines not only autonomous vehicle, but artificial intelligence as well. AI is "the use of computers and related equipment to enable a machine to duplicate or mimic the behavior of human beings." An autonomous vehicle uses "artificial intelligence, sensors, and [GPS] coordinates to drive itself."

To be clear: autonomous vehicles are not yet the law of the land in Nevada. This bill must pass through two committees and receive a hearing before it can be voted on and become law. Some preliminary thoughts on the bill in its present form follow.

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Updated April 15, 2011

Watch video from the 2011 Robot Block Party

Check out pictures from the party

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The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) is once again participating in National Robotics Week, organized by the Robotics Caucus of the U.S. Congress and leading robotics companies, schools, and organizations. In connection to NRW, Stanford University will hold a Robot Block Party on April 14, 2011. This event will showcase cutting edge robotics technology from throughout the Bay Area.

This event is free and open to the public. No registration needed.

Google Map

Parking is available.
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Public Transportation Directions
The free Marguerite buses are available for everyone.
Download the bus map schedule or check the on-time status.

From Tresidder and the Law School take the O or SE bus. Get off at corner of Campus Drive & Stock Farm Road. Walk on Stock Farm Road for approx 2 blocks and make a left at Oak Road.

From the Main Quad and Jordan Quad, take the SLAC or C Bus. Get off at PS5 and walk to Oak Road a block away.

From the Palo Alto Caltrain station, take the SE bus. Get off at corner of Campus Drive & Stock Farm Road. Walk on Stock Farm Road for approx 2 blocks and make a left at Oak Road. Alternatively, take the P bus. Get off at the Oval and then switch to the C or SLAC bus. Get off at PS5 and walk to Oak Road a block away.

Watch video from last year's block party

Check out the Bay Area National Robotics Week events.

Check out all all events nationwide.

Event Contact: [email protected]

Related to my work here in robot ethics, the following is an advance look at my paper forthcoming in Journal of Military Ethics:

Military 2.0: Ethical Blowback from Emerging Technologies

I don’t know that generativity is a theory, strictly speaking. It’s more of a quality. (Specifically, five qualities.) The attendant theory, as I read it, is that technology exhibits these particular, highly desirable qualities as a function of specific incentives. These incentives are themselves susceptible to various forces—including, it turns out, consumer demand and citizen fear.

The law is in a position to influence this dynamic. Thus, for instance, Comcast might have a business incentive to slow down peer-to-peer traffic and only refrain due to FCC policy. Or, as Barbara van Schewick demonstrates inter alia in Internet Architecture and Innovation, a potential investor may lack the incentive to fund a start up if there is a risk that the product will be blocked.

Similarly, online platforms like Facebook or Yahoo! might not facilitate communication to the same degree in the absence of Section 230 immunity for fear that they will be held responsible for the thousand flowers they let bloom. I agree with Eric Goldman’s recent essay in this regard: it is no coincidence that the big Internet players generally hail from these United States.

ACM Computers Freedom Privacy is in its 20th year. This year was exciting to me in that robots entered the mix. My panel on the topic featured forecaster and essayist Paul Saffo, EFF's Brad Templeton, philosopher Patrick Lin, and was moderated by Wired's Gary Wolf. You can find a video recording of our panel here. I also spoke to the Dr. Katherine Albrecht Radio Show, which was broadcasting live from the conference. Click here to listen.

I attended a fascinating thesis defense today on the subject of human-robot interaction by Stanford PhD candidate Victoria Groom. HRI experiments apparently tend to focus on human encounters with robots; few studies test the psychology behind robot operation. Groom’s work explores how we feel about the tasks we perform through robots. One of the more interesting questions she and her colleagues ask is: to what extent do we feel like it’s really us performing the task? The question is important where, as in the military, people work through robots to carry out morally charged tasks. And the answer might have repercussions for how we think about evaluation and punishment.

I started a new blog around robotics programming and scholarship at Stanford Law School. Some of us here believe that robotics is a transformative technology on par with the Internet. (We're not alone: the "roadmap for U.S. robotics" prepared for Congress by a coalition of robotics labs and research institutes is called "From Internet to Robotics.") I've said before and I'll say again: the age of Internet exceptionalism is over. We can now do "digital" things in the real world. The chief importance (and danger) of the Internet is the imaginative possibilities it opens up. Robotics is how we will prove the slogan Chris Anderson came up with in a slightly different context: "Atoms are the new bits." Please stay tuned.

Thanks to Elaine Adolfo for the image.

I'm very happy to announce National Robotics Week, an effort by leading robotics companies, research universities, museums, and others to raise awareness of U.S. robotics. In this inaugural year, NRW will take place all over the country April 10 through 18, including three great events in the Bay Area.

The website is nationalroboticsweek.org. You can follow NRW on Twitter (#roboweek) and Facebook.

PS: The NRW logo is available under a Creative Commons license.