Project description
Rethinking criminal law for a robotic future
Robots are created to help with tasks that are dangerous, repetitive, or difficult, and even for entertainment. However, despite the good intentions of their creators, robots can cause harm that current criminal laws do not address. Criminal law is meant to keep society stable and address any instances of disruptions or violations. As robots become more common, they could challenge how the law works. The ERC-funded ROBOCRIM project aims to rethink criminal law to better include robots. It will focus on three main areas: understanding robots’ role in criminal law, developing a new approach to criminal law, and creating models to help institutions respond to robot-related crimes. This project will offer new ways to integrate robots into society and the justice system.
Objective
Robots are made to serve humans in carrying out tasks that are hard, dangerous, or repetitive, as well as for entertainment. Despite their (generally) benign objectives, robots may promote harmful outcomes that are under the radar of criminal law. One of the main aims of criminal law is to stabilize society. If something wrong is done, the law provides ways of responding to it. The situation could be complicated by the wider application of robots in social life: not only do they disrupt the practice of law, they also have the potential to challenge its very foundations. The main aim of the ROBOCRIM project is to build a philosophical ground for criminal law that accommodates robots. I will ask, “How can the philosophical foundations of criminal law be reconstructed to accommodate robots?” instead of, “How to accommodate robots into criminal law?” which is the usual formulation. This shifts the approach to the discussion on robots and their alignment with law and social life. The project will be conducted within three interrelated work streams. The first stream will be devoted to robots and their status from the perspective of the philosophy of criminal law. The second stream will focus on the foundation of a new account of criminal law, which I call the “phenomenological account”. The emphasis in the third stream will be on building models of institutions that accommodate robots within criminal law, to be tested using experimental methods. These new models of criminal response to crimes committed by robots treat robots as initiators of events that require a response from criminal law rather than as individual agents that could be responsible for their actions. This, combined with a novel account of criminal law, makes the project ground-breaking. It is interdisciplinary, employs multiple methods, and will shed new light on how robots might better fit into society in general, and criminal law in particular.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
31-007 Krakow
Poland
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.