UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

IN BRIEF

Scientists' ability to create organisms through synthetic biology is getting easier and cheaper fueling the start of a new era in biology.
Synthetic biology has already lead to some innovations such as lab-grown meat, advancement in medicine, and even helping to bring back extinct species.

We have learned how to manipulate the code of life. Why this hasn’t received more attention is beyond me.

Synthetic Biology is a multidisciplinary field that often defies definition. Yet despite its complexity, it is a remarkably easy field to apply once you’ve learned the science behind it. From a computer, you can input your desired genetic sequence, print it out, glue it together, put it into a cell and then watch whatever you have created sprout.

20130216_091216_synbio650

Even more astonishingly is that it has also helped provide us with our best insights into how life on earth began, answering questions that have been with us from the beginning. Reason enough to learn a little more about it.

THE FUTURE OF LIFE

The amount of people and money pouring into this field is growing incredibly fast. This is being further expedited by the emergence of DIY bio (do it yourself biology). Labs are springing up all over the world as the tools required are getting cheaper and more ubiquitous. Now almost anyone with a decent enough understanding of the subject can build their own synthetic biology lab and start hacking away at life.

We have also recently discovered new bases that will allow us to do things we never would have dreamed of. All life that we know is made from DNA containing primarily four bases: A, C, T, and G. We have now added X and Y, opening the door for us to create things never before thought possible.

We are already seeing some of what it can do. Lab-grown meat, de-extinction, new biochemicals and medicines, the list goes on and on. Before long it is believed that we will be able to synthetically recreate humans.

We have been altering the genomes of various species since the agricultural revolution, the difference now is in our ability to select specific lines from the code of life and swap them or delete them or put new lines in. This will have a wide range of implications as we learn more about the roles of specific genes while also allowing us to direct and accelerate evolution.

(Glowing microbes grown by Dr. Scott Pownall at Open Science Network, he took the genes from glowing jellyfish and inserted them into Escherichia coli cells.)

The 20th century saw a series of breakthroughs in our understanding of Physics that redefined what we were capable of. It brought about the atomic age, allowed us to explore our solar system, and opened up insights into the universe that fundamentally changed our understanding of reality.

Biology seems to be experiencing a similar paradigm shift. It is allowing us to manipulate the building blocks of life and redefine the natural world, all of which will radically alter our collective fate.

IN BRIEF

Few government bodies are considering how we will categorize machines with advanced artificial intelligence.
Some have proposed creating a separate category known as "electronic persons" as a basis for deciding questions of legal standing.

Science fiction likes to depict robots as autonomous machines, capable of making their own decisions and often expressing their own personalities. Yet we also tend to think of robots as property, and as lacking the kind of rights that we reserve for people.

humanoidrobot_home-600x600 — **CLICK TO VIEW THE FULL INFOGRAPHIC**

But if a machine can think, decide and act on its own volition, if it can be harmed or held responsible for its actions, should we stop treating it like property and start treating it more like a person with rights?

What if a robot achieves true self-awareness? Should it have equal rights with us and the same protection under the law, or at least something similar?

These are some of the issues being discussed by the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs. Last year it released a draft report and motion calling for a set of civil law rules on robotics regulating their manufacture, use, autonomy and impact upon society.

Of the legal solutions proposed, perhaps most interesting was the suggestion of creating a legal status of “electronic persons” for the most sophisticated robots.

APPROACHING PERSONHOOD

The report acknowledged that improvements in the autonomous and cognitive abilities of robots makes them more than simple tools, and makes ordinary rules on liability, such as contractual and tort liability, insufficient for handling them.

For example, the current EU directive on liability for harm by robots only covers foreseeable damage caused by manufacturing defects. In these cases, the manufacturer is responsible. However, when robots are able to learn and adapt to their environment in unpredictable ways, it’s harder for a manufacturer to foresee problems that could cause harm.

The report also questions about whether or not sufficiently sophisticated robots should be regarded as natural persons, legal persons (like corporations), animals or objects. Rather than lumping them into an existing category, it proposes that a new category of “electronic person” is more appropriate.

The report does not advocate immediate legislative action, though. Instead, it proposes that legislation be updated if robots become more complex; if and when they develop more behavioral sophistication. If this occurs, one recommendation is to reduce the liability of “creators” proportional to the autonomy of the robot, and that a compulsory “no-fault” liability insurance could cover the shortfall.

But why go so far as to create a new category of “electronic persons”? After all, computers still have a long way to go before they match human intelligence if they ever do.

But it can be agreed that robots – or more precisely the software that controls them – is becoming increasingly complex. Autonomous (or “emergent”) machines are becoming more common. There are ongoing discussions about the legal liability for autonomous vehicles, or whether we might be able to sue robotic surgeons.

These are not complicated problems as long as liability rests with the manufacturers. But what if manufacturers cannot be easily identified, such as if open source software is used by autonomous vehicles? Whom do you sue when there are millions of “creators” all over the world?

Artificial intelligence is also starting to live up to its moniker. Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, proposed a test in which a computer is considered “intelligent” if it fools humans into believing that the computer is human by its responses to questions. Already there are machines that are getting close to passing this test.

There are also other incredible successes, such as the computer that creates soundtracks to videos that are indistinguishable from natural sounds, the robot that can beat CAPTCHA, one that can create handwriting indistinguishable from human handwriting and the AI that recently beat some of the world’s best poker players.

Robots may eventually match human cognitive abilities, and they are becoming increasingly human-like, including the ability to “feel” pain.

If this progress continues, it may not be long before self-aware robots are not just a product of fantastic speculation.

The EU report is among the first to formally consider these issues, but other countries are also engaging. Peking University’s Yueh-Hsuan Weng writes that Japan and South Korea expect us to live in a human-robot coexistence by 2030. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry has created a series of robot guidelines addressing business and safety issues for next generation robots.

ELECTRONIC PERSONS

If we did give robots some kind of legal status, what would it be? If they behaved like humans, we could treat them like legal subjects rather than legal objects, or at least something in between. Legal subjects have rights and duties, and this gives them legal “personhood”. They do not have to be physical persons; a corporation is not a physical person but is recognized as a legal subject. Legal objects, on the other hand, do not have rights or duties although they may have economic value.

Assigning rights and duties to an inanimate object or software program independent of their creators may seem strange. However, with corporations, we already see extensive rights and obligations given to fictitious legal entities.

Perhaps the approach to robots could be similar to that of corporations? The robot (or software program), if sufficiently sophisticated or if satisfying certain requirements, could be given similar rights to a corporation. This would allow it to earn money, pay taxes, own assets and sue or be sued independently of its creators. Its creators could, like directors of corporations, have rights or duties to the robot and to others with whom the robot interacts.

Robots would still have to be partly treated as legal objects since, unlike corporations, they may have physical bodies. The “electronic person” could thus be a combination of both a legal subject and a legal object.

The European Parliament will vote on the resolution this month. Regardless of the result, reconsidering robots and the law is inevitable and will require complex legal, computer science, and insurance research.