Roman Slavery Law: A Competent Answer of how to Deal With Strong Artificial Intelligence? Review of Robot Rights with View of Czech and German Constitutional Law and Law History

Abstract

One basic aim of law is the correct attribution of liability. Natural or legal persons have to bear responsibility after infringing other parties’ legal interests. Normally the damaging party has to compensate the damages caused by his/her deeds. In many cases the attribution of responsibility appears easy and unambiguous. Though, this only applies in cases where there is an actual person behind the infringement. Attributing liability appears to be highly complex in cases of artificial intelligence (AI). When significant technological innovations appear, especially if these innovations manage to bring major changes in the division of labour, or even changes in society, the regulations concerning liability are often questioned. Today, law distinguishes between the holder/user, programmer, and producer. This may be sufficient for today’s technology and today’s development in AI. Though, these cases still manage to pose a challenge for our modern legislation. Since technology and also AI advance rapidly, this problem is not going to be any less complicated in close, but also in far future. Here it makes sense to take old legislations as “inspiration” for present and future law-making, in this case antic roman slave-law, as the antic romans faced similar problems and opted for partly similar solutions as modern legislations.

Keywords: Slave law, law history, Roman law, criminal law, artificial intelligence