"Man is a robot with defects." -Emile Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born Technological advances are increasingly transforming our society, including the property and casualty insurance industry. One fascinating and dynamic area concerns the imminent use of self-driving automobiles and their effect on legal liability in auto accidents. From one perspective, a car driven by a "robot" with artificial intelligence could be much safer than one driven by a human being. (Research shows that the error rate for prescription drugs filled by robots is much lower than the error rate for prescriptions filled by a traditional pharmacist.) These self-driving vehicles would be equipped with cameras, anticollision sensors, and powerful computer software and hardware devices that will take thousands of life-or-death decisions out of the hands of flawed, distracted Homo sapiens. Google and other companies are currently working on prototype driverless cars. These cars would be operated in a sense by a state-of-the-art robot. Many legal experts argue that our existing laws are woefully inadequate to deal with the legal liability and moral responsibility for these upcoming driverless vehicles. One professor of criminal law, Gabriel Halevy at Ono Academic College in Israel, has written about this issue in his forthcoming book, When Robots Kill. Halevy argues that "we do not know how to treat these creatures." Complications regarding legal liability will grow as autos become more autonomous. There are ways of assigning responsibility under current law, but these methods might make less sense as technology becomes more autonomous in vehicles. It is important to not think about autonomous autos in a binary way. As the years go by, cars will slowly become more autonomous, with human beings playing a more limited role in the overall operation of the vehicle. Autonomy in an automobile should be thought of as a spectrum, with myriad gray areas. Let's jump ahead 15 years or so. After performing your due diligence, you purchase a self-operating car designed and built by a leading automobile manufacturer. Due to a major technical glitch in the robot's operating system, a horrific accident ensues. Who is the culpable party? Could you face some liability in not properly performing your due diligence or failing to perform the requisite maintenance on the vehicle? Conversely, some experts would argue that in a fully autonomous auto, the robot itself is liable. Could a robot with full autonomy be held civilly liable for its actions? Or the firm that manufactures it? Some legal experts argue that determining the legal status of robots entails a prudent balancing act. Manufacturers and auto owners need to assume responsibility to take safety precautions with the increasingly smart autos. Yet manufacturers should not be so stymied with fear of lawsuits that they impede innovations. So what do you think? Who should bear the legal liability of negligence in auto accidents pertaining to semiautonomous or autonomous autos? How would our laws have to be altered?

What are some other factors that might play into assigning this responsibility?

If you were CEO of an insurance whose main product is automobile insurance, would you consider this technology an opportunity or a threat?