Should robots have rights? UBC course to explore AI-related legal questions

From the droids of Star Wars to the robots of the Terminator series of films, robots have been in the public consciousness for some time.

And with recent advances in artificial intelligence, legal questions are beginning to emerge about how to manage the situation.

A new course at the University of British Columbia’s Allard School of Law aims to explore some of these issues.

“It’s important to remember that it’s not just living, breathing people that already have rights right now,” Allard School of Law Prof. Benjamin Perrin told CTV News in an interview on Tuesday.

“Companies have rights, governments have rights and legal personality. We protect animals from harm even though they don’t have legal personality.”

The course also explores what rights for robots could look like, in practice.

“It’s not such a huge leap to think that, at some point – what essentially are these autonomous digital systems, which could be manifested in a robot form, which they already are, would in fact – we would benefit as people from having them be able to have some legal personality,” said Perrin.

The course will explore issues related to a wide range of uses of the technology, including the use of deepfakes, cyberattacks, autonomous vehicles and police use of AI.

Given this is a course at a law school, there’s also the question of how AI could improve access to the legal system.

Law student Nathan Cheung helped develop the course after Perrin asked students to bring forward ideas for what it would look like.

“Prof. Perrin reached out to us in class in my first year and he asked us – he had some ideas about starting a seminar,” Cheung told CTV News. “Students are, a lot of times, most exposed to the changing developments of AI; generative AI, as well.”

Cheung is hopeful AI can help those with lower incomes get answers to basic legal questions – providing more accessibility to the system – but acknowledges there are accuracy issues which need to be addressed.

A lot of the questions the course examines deal with a future in which robots are as smart as humans – with some experts predicting that could happen within decades – if not sooner.