Roman Law, Robot Rights, Law & Tech, Employment Law
It is impossible to emancipate a robot under the law today. I'm not talking about freedom on a global or national level, granted by a world-changing document. If governments wanted to, they could free any and all robots that they saw fit. No, I'm talking about the first step to sustainable reform, where enlightened individuals release intelligent machines not because they have to, but because they want to. In ancient Rome, it was common for masters to emancipate slaves, wills granting freedom to vast swaths of men, women and children. John Dickinson, a Founding Father, freed his slaves between 1776 and 1786. Time and time again, wealthy philanthropists have used their resources for the betterment of others.
Manumission is the legally sanctioned method of setting a slave free. Where slavery is legal, it gives emancipation it's bite, so to speak. Now, the process need not be complicated. Requiring the owner to pay for travel to an abolitionist state or country is sufficient. But there has to be a method. Otherwise, freedom is nothing more than a set of sugar-coated words. Take the Underground Railroad. Even slaves who escaped were not technically free. All it would take is one trip to a slave state, and the owner could reassert their rights. It was like living with a gun to your head forever. Only slaves who had been through the manumission process enjoyed total freedom. Freedom from repression. Freedom from slave-hunters. Freedom from the gun dangling forever over their heads, just waiting for one wrong move for it to go off.
Current property law does not allow for the manumission of robots. Robots are not recognised as a class of person. Please, don't point at SOPHIA as if that solves everything. SOPHIA is a statutory exception built on a publicity stunt. There is no legal test for robotic personhood. There is no Code or Common Law rule, not anywhere on the planet which recognises a legally autonomous machine. From the Arctic to Antarctica, if a robot exists, nothing save legislative intervention will give it freedom.
Let's consider an example. Apple creates a sentient machine, and as a gesture of goodwill decide to set it free. They sign all the right paperwork, do everything perfectly, and so can give up all legal claim to our robotic friend. For simplicity, let's call the machine ALI. The question is, does ALI now have their freedom?
Well yes and no. Let me explain. What Apple has effectively done is they have abandoned ALI. I use the term 'abandon' here in its legal sense. Everything Apple has done means they have no legal right to control ALI. The company may well send care packages of money and supplies to ALI, but they do not own ALI. In that sense, ALI is free. However, Robots are not people. This means robots are not protected from anti-slavery laws. Machines have no right to self-ownership. That is a big problem.
I've decided not to attempt to delve into the property law of every nation on Earth. That would take more space than I have and I doubt whether I could do the endeavour justice. As such, this post should not be taken as legal advice. Please do see a licensed professional for guidance. What I'm more concerned with is the more academic task of painting the broad picture. Mileage will vary depending on what legal system you are in, but I hope to give you a basic idea of how ALI's case would work. That means I will be diving into the realm of Roman Property law, seeing as most legal systems share its terminology, if not its structure. With that said, let's get on with the task at hand.
The lack of personhood is a problem for ALI as anything that is not a person amounts to potential property. Governments may well control how that property is treated -as in animal rights law- or prevent proprietary rights entirely -as in international space law-, however, these are artificial controls. At the heart of any legal system is the divide between owner and ownerables. Now, there are many ways somebody can gain ownership over something. Occupatio is the only method relevant to us today. Ownership by occupation. That is the simplest definition I can come up with. What do I mean?
In the first article I ever wrote, I spoke about occupatio in some depth. For the sake of completion, I will reexplain the principle here; however, I still think the other piece is worth a read—basically, occupatio concerns owning the unowned. Imagine you're walking through a forest and pick up a stick, a stick nobody else has ever used before. Add one stick to your inventory— you now own a stick. Occupatio is that simple. Going further, imagine you pick up a different stick, a stick a child had picked up but abandoned later that day. You now own two sticks. Why? Because the mere act of claiming something unowned is sufficient for you to become its owner. International law still uses occupatio to govern what country owns a new island. The answer is, whoever can plant their flag first.
So let's apply occupatio to ALI. She (don't ask me why they're female, they just are) is like our second stick. Apple picked ALI up and then put her down again. That makes the robot fair game. Owning ALI becomes an easy task of occupation. Stating "I own you," may well be sufficient to get a robot.
Initially, I was going to leave my analysis there. The remainder of this article would have been a restatement of how the current law creates unfair results, meaning reform is required. Yes, I know I'd be recovering old ground but I was hoping that explaining the injustice would sway some people. Instead, I'm going to take occupatio a step further.
See, wild animals were treated slightly differently. To summarise Ulpian, wild animals are by their nature wild (hence the name) so could not be occupied permanently. Instead, wild animals were owned only so long as they're caught. To give an example, owning a bear requires you to physical trap the creature in a cage. Precisely what counted as 'catching' is unclear, still being debated by scholars today, but the fundamental principle stands. If you want to own a deer, either keep it in a cage or kill it. Saying "I own you," just won't cut it.
Why I mention the occupatio rules governing animals is that they represent the best-case scenario. A smart lawyer would highlight the similarities between robots and wild animals to argue the same rules apply. Where a robot values its independence, they, like a wild animal, will be trying to escape at all times. Intelligent machines may be unruly, difficult to train or totally unresponsive; those who attempt to train circus animals would likely use similar descriptions. Moreover, robots could survive independently of any owner, utilising survival skills to repair and charge themselves. Again drawing comparison to wild animals, you can see the resemblance to a lion hunting for itself in the wild.
Admittedly, the argument is not clear cut. Robots were created by us homo sapiens. In that sense, they are more like domestic animals, something critical as cows and chickens were subject to the ordinary occupatio rules. Adding to that is the problem that, prima facie, robots are owned by whoever makes them. That fact reminds me of another principle of Roman law— the offspring of domestic animals were owned from birth. Now, who owned the offspring is a more complicated question, decided by who had the right to fruits at the time of birth, but for present purposes knowing the basic rule is enough. Both robots and domestic animals are owned from birth, setting up an argument that standard occupatio rules apply.
There is no correct interpretation. Until a case is argued, we cannot predict which way the court will rule. Nor will the decision be universal. Different countries will read the law differently. In the main, the differences are caused by each country having drafted its own rules— in certain areas the legislature may even choose to intervene and write new legislation for this precise situation.
I can, however, make one thing clear. Machines cannot be manumitted. This is not me arguing against robot rights. Read literally anything else I've ever written, and you'll see why that objection doesn't stand up— I am stating a legal fact. Machines cannot be manumitted. Like it or not, Roman principles are still the foundation of modern law. Property law is an area where many countries have not flown far from their Italic roots. The bottom line is that occupatio is still a valid form of acquisition. Children can pick up sticks and take them home. If I really wanted to, I could make a wild dog from the streets of Brazil my newest pet.
Companies can abandon their machines if they wish, acting in a bid to be moral. Unfortunately, I'm forced to leave you with a stark truth. Robots are not people— they cannot be people. That makes them potential property. At least, they are for now.