ABSTRACT
The tech transformation is forcing us to rethink new solutions for mapping risks and opportunities arising from interactions between robots, empowered by AI, and workers (‘IWRs’). While doing so, we must keep in mind that the debate is not about artificial intelligence and robots, but about us, who will have to live and work with them. Following this line of thought, we are aware that there are challenging changes ahead. Such changes should be investigated in relation to the occurrence of new social and psychophysical risks connected to IWRs. My essay is built on the conviction that robots empowered by AI (‘AI/R’), also in the form of the so-called ‘Frontier AI’, should not merely augment humans in their capabilities, but that AI/R and workers can become better together, thereby boosting worker wellbeing and productivity.
The absence of a unified scientific framework makes us blind to various forms of reciprocity that exist when AI/R share the same physical and social space as workers. My thesis is aimed at buttressing the forefront of understanding and shaping the future of work regulation around AI/R, the related liabilities regime, also with reference to possible damages to compensate and risks to mitigate, moving from a legal comparison between the EU and US labor systems in the field of accidents at work and occupational diseases. The questions from which I move are as follows: what do we want artificial intelligence, including advanced robotics, to do for us, or rather ‘with’ us in the workplace? Who regulates this interaction between the worker and the AI/R? And how should that interaction be regulated? Furthermore, given that interaction, what might happen if the responsibility for any injury to the worker depends directly/exclusively on the AI/R? Do insurance regimes for accidents at work/occupational diseases, already included in our social security systems, even cover work related injuries connected directly to AI/R? And how efficient, in terms of damage mitigation, are the procedures that the safety at work regulation imposes in the context of advanced technology production and where the worker co-operates with the AI/R? Upon the results of an ongoing trans disciplinary research project, I also intend to develop a basis for a new academic labor law field concerning the IWRs regulation (here labelled as ‘Robot Labor Law’).
Faioli, Michele, Prospects on Risks, Liabilities and Artificial Intelligence, Empowering Robots at Workplace Level (September 27, 2024).
Leave a Reply