Last fall I was on a great panel at Stanford Law School on robotics and the law. It had great people on it – Dan Siciliano, Paul Saffo, and Ryan Calo. Great discussion; one of the things it brought home to me, as someone who came to law-and-robotics issues from laws of war questions, was how much those issues have cognates in other areas of emerging robotics, such as elder-care. The panel discussion is up on video here:
Legal Challenges in an Age of Robotics, November 12, 2009. One of the things I really liked about this panel was the way that Ryan Calo served as a very active moderator – he’s an expert in these issues himself, and so was able to lead the discussion, including the audience discussion. The best parts are actually Dan Siciliano and Paul Saffo; I was a little unsure of how much the audience knew about the battlefield issues, and had too much wind-up.
(Ryan has also written very interesting stuff on privacy and technology.)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P021944l2LA[/youtube]