Law & Tech, Administrative Law, Social Commentary, Sociology
“Happy Birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to (insert name here). Happy birthday to you.”
The 'Happy Birthday' Song
I’m assuming we’ve all heard this song at least a couple times in our lives. It tends to come around at least once a year. The inspiration for this article actually came on my own birthday— I won’t tell you which one. Every human being on the planet is given a day for their loved ones to basically celebrate that person’s existence, providing an opportunity to scream about how great a person is. “For a wonderful grandson.” “You’ve always been a funny guy.” “Happy birthday you old fart.” These are extracts from just some of the cards I have sat before me. Hopefully, the quotes provide you with some idea of the sentimental value a birthday has. Perhaps more importantly for our present purposes, birthdays, or rather a date of birth, also serves a highly practical function in society. Let me ask you how many times have you had to go on a website and scroll all the way to your year of birth for some seemingly pointless form. Having recently had to start using the scrollbar myself, I can attest that they have a nasty habit of making you feel older than you actually are. At least these horrific experiences have the advantage of ensuring you know what I’m rabbiting on about today.
I’m probably stating the obvious when I say robots don’t have birthdays. Requiring someone to be born is literally in the title. However, for the sake of being thorough, I will repeat that fact. Robots don’t have birthdays. There— now you know. Part one of my article is, therefore answered. That was easy. Can I move on?
Unfortunately for me, part two doesn’t have an easy solve. Robots don’t have birthdays. That doesn’t mean they don’t need them. 'Why' is the question probably on most of your lips? Machines can’t eat, so all the missed birthday cake is kinda redundant, while a few socks hardly seem worth all the hassle. Bust what if I were to tell you that birthdays have a vital role to play in how we govern society. Birthdays are actually a linchpin for bureaucracy. Seriously. Don’t believe me? Well, R (A) v. Croydon LBC was a case where the whole focus was on what government body got to decide when a person was born to assess asylum claims. As a law student, I will need to memorise the facts and ratio for my degree. And people say that studying administrative law is boring. How could it be when it helps you realise just how critical birthdays really are?
Telling you a load of ways birthdays are used by bureaucracies is probably the easiest way to convince you of my viewpoint. After all, we were always told to show not tell as kids. That involves publishing a rather long list for your enjoyment. I’ll try to keep to the more important uses to make things easier, but I make no promises if the result comes to some relatively dry reading. Seeing as there’s no reason for me to put off the process for any longer, I’ll get on with it.
- Age is relevant to calculate child tax credit entitlement (which every household with an under-16, or under-18 in full-time education, is entitled to in the UK).
- As a requirement for a driving license.
- Ensuring a person is capable of criminal responsibility.
- Sets the statutory retirement age.
- Allows a person to vote.
- Is a bar to purchasing certain goods -alcohol, cigarettes-
Admittedly, not all these uses will be relevant to robots. Again, as constructs that don’t eat, they won’t be heading down to the pub anytime soon. Given they’re not biological, I’m not sure the government would be happy to pay child maintenance for their upkeep either. Even conceding that fact though, there are still many other reasons giving robots a birthday might be helpful. Right off the bat, criminal responsibility is a big one. Remember, when I wrote about Hobbes’ concept of the Social Contract. My concern here is in part rehashing the fears I expressed there. Robots, androids, automatons, whatever you want to call them are outside the regular legal order. They are ghosts— they are no one. Obligator callbacks out the way, I can actually get back to writing a compelling argument.
For fun, I thought I’d take one of the most basic uses of the birthday and see if I could create some problems. Let’s see if we can break the legal system using the humble driving license. Using a future where robotic emancipation has become universal, the task is straightforward. Say I program a robot butler to drive me around. By some miracle, Parliament decides that all sufficiently intelligent beings are people. Suddenly my mechanical Alfred needs a driving licence. Surely that shouldn’t be a problem— this being was literally designed to drive. Except, my robot has only existed for a few months, whereas the minimum driving age on public roads in the UK is sixteen for learners. Unlike employment, where there are loads of loopholes to allow for child actors and paperboys, this rule is airtight. Just because you can graduate university before hitting puberty doesn’t mean you can drive. Of course, companies could simply store their robot butlers for sixteen years before selling them on, thereby allowing for the machine’s ‘age’ to correspond with the minimum driving age. By that point, the device will be outdated; meanwhile, the company will have probably gone bankrupt from all the storage costs. When I said I was intent on breaking the legal system, I wasn’t kidding. Our laws are not calibrated to deal with a group of people who age differently from the rest of society.
Looking at the handy list I’ve created, you can see I’ve not just chosen an anomaly either. Statutory retirement occurs at around 65. Try explaining to Apple why the fancy AI they’ve developed to run the whole company has to be replaced every 65 years, even though that AI is immortal and has nothing better to do because it needs to ‘retire’. Yes, I’ve chosen to put retire in air quotes, because, realistically, that machine isn’t going to do anything but sit around uselessly for a bit before being turned off and hid away somewhere for eternity. Criminal responsibility is also a big issue. Any robotic person under 10, at least under current UK laws, could not be charged with a criminal offence. If you're lucky, their manufacturer (their ‘parent’?) will face liability. For children, this rule is justified as babies don’t know right from wrong. Not true of a machine which can be programmed to understand morality even before its body’s been created.
My examples are absurd. No legal system on the planet would be so mismanaged that the courts would allow any of these arguments to succeed. Practical justice is a thing for a reason. But on a purely formalistic interpretation of the law, these arguments logically flow from our current legislation requires. For the first 18 years of their existence, robotic people are almost entirely useless as the law does not recognise them as having significant legal duties and freedoms. Age is definitive, yet no matter how advanced technology gets, it will never be possible to age up a robot. Sure, they can have the experiences of a person with that age, but they cannot have the age per se unless they actually exist for that period of time. Once again, I’ve allowed myself to get slightly convoluted, so I’ll try to rephrase the point. To really oversimplify the matter, age is defined by how long a set of atoms have been organised in a certain way. Robots won’t be of age to do a lot of things when they're first made because there is no way for their creators to speed up time. So intelligent machines will be in legal limbo. They’ll have the innate qualities -intelligence, emotions, whatever- to be a person with full legal rights, but they won’t fulfil the age requirements to do much. In some places, they won’t even be able to buy a chocolate bar, as this requires them to be able to form a valid contract.
Add robots into the picture and the bureaucracy we have built on age, built on birthdays, crumbles to dust before our eyes. Pragmatism requires us to allow mechanical people to do stuff, even if they don’t meet the minimum age requirements: unlike when at a theme park, the age restriction no longer serves a purpose. There’s no risk of flinging SOPHIA out of a roller coaster she is too young to ride. In the same way, there is no risk of holding her accountable for criminal actions she doesn’t understand because we assume that moral understanding forms a fundamental part of her programming. Equally, as robots have the potential to outlive us by several lifetimes, forcing them to retire at 65 makes no sense— as a proportion of their existence, this is a tiny number. Using birthdays as a social control mechanism works excellent if everybody is singing from the same hymn sheet. As soon as you add people that experience age in a very different way, the whole system breaks down.
So what have I managed to uncover today? Not a lot. Oh no, some seemingly simple legal process doesn’t work well when we put robots into the mix because they’re so unlike us. Chances are, I could have just said that before starting out today and saved us all some time. Why then have I been so intent on assessing the role of birthdays in the law? Firstly, it seemed like a cool idea. You have a guarantee that nobody else has ever managed to combine birthdays and robot rights into an article— that gives me bragging rights at the very least. More importantly, it shows how the most innocuous instruments the State uses to run society can prove problematic when faced with technological development. This article may be all fun and games. However, it also serves as an important warning. We must always be vigilant. The devil’s in the detail. Yes, this might not answer the question I asked myself. For once, I don't mind. Ensuring you understand the importance of the little things is much more critical. Forget about the details and any reform that we successfully implement has the potential to be catastrophic.