Criminal liability of autonomous agents: from the unthinkable to the plausible

Series : Lecture notes in computer science, ISSN 0302-9743, vol. 8929The evolution of information technologies have brought us to a point where we are confronted with the existence of agents - computational entities - which are able to act autonomously with little or no human intervention. And their behavior can damage individual or collective interests that are protected by criminal law. Based on the analysis of different models of criminal responsibility of legal persons - which constituted an interesting advance in the criminal law in rela-tion to what was hitherto traditionally accepted -, we will appraise whether the necessary legal elements to have direct criminal liability of artificial entities are present.This work is part-funded by CROWDSOURCING project (Reference: DER2012-39492-C02-01)

A Unifying Theory of Biological Function

A new theory that naturalizes biological function is explained and compared with earlier etiological and causal role theories. Etiological theories explain functions from how they are caused over their evolutionary history. Causal role theories analyze how functional mechanisms serve the current capacities of their containing system. The new proposal unifies the key notions of both kinds of theories, but goes beyond them by explaining how functions in an organism can exist as factors with autonomous causal efficacy. The goal-directedness and normativity of functions exist in this strict sense as well. The theory depends on an internal physiological or neural process that mimics an organism’s fitness, and modulates the organism’s variability accordingly. The structure of the internal process can be subdivided into subprocesses that monitor specific functions in an organism. The theory matches well with each intuition on a previously published list of intuited ideas about biological functions, including intuitions that have posed difficulties for other theories

Intrinsic activity in the fly brain gates visual information during behavioral choices

The small insect brain is often described as an input/output system that executes reflex-like behaviors. It can also initiate neural activity and behaviors intrinsically, seen as spontaneous behaviors, different arousal states and sleep. However, less is known about how intrinsic activity in neural circuits affects sensory information processing in the insect brain and variability in behavior. Here, by simultaneously monitoring Drosophila's behavioral choices and brain activity in a flight simulator system, we identify intrinsic activity that is associated with the act of selecting between visual stimuli. We recorded neural output (multiunit action potentials and local field potentials) in the left and right optic lobes of a tethered flying Drosophila, while its attempts to follow visual motion (yaw torque) were measured by a torque meter. We show that when facing competing motion stimuli on its left and right, Drosophila typically generate large torque responses that flip from side to side. The delayed onset (0.1-1 s) and spontaneous switch-like dynamics of these responses, and the fact that the flies sometimes oppose the stimuli by flying straight, make this behavior different from the classic steering reflexes. Drosophila, thus, seem to choose one stimulus at a time and attempt to rotate toward its direction. With this behavior, the neural output of the optic lobes alternates; being augmented on the side chosen for body rotation and suppressed on the opposite side, even though the visual input to the fly eyes stays the same. Thus, the flow of information from the fly eyes is gated intrinsically. Such modulation can be noise-induced or intentional; with one possibility being that the fly brain highlights chosen information while ignoring the irrelevant, similar to what we know to occur in higher animals

Order in Spontaneous Behavior

Brains are usually described as input/output systems: they transform sensory input into motor output. However, the motor output of brains (behavior) is notoriously variable, even under identical sensory conditions. The question of whether this behavioral variability merely reflects residual deviations due to extrinsic random noise in such otherwise deterministic systems or an intrinsic, adaptive indeterminacy trait is central for the basic understanding of brain function. Instead of random noise, we find a fractal order (resembling Lévy flights) in the temporal structure of spontaneous flight maneuvers in tethered Drosophila fruit flies. Lévy-like probabilistic behavior patterns are evolutionarily conserved, suggesting a general neural mechanism underlying spontaneous behavior. Drosophila can produce these patterns endogenously, without any external cues. The fly's behavior is controlled by brain circuits which operate as a nonlinear system with unstable dynamics far from equilibrium. These findings suggest that both general models of brain function and autonomous agents ought to include biologically relevant nonlinear, endogenous behavior-initiating mechanisms if they strive to realistically simulate biological brains or out-compete other agents

“Excellence R Us”: university research and the fetishisation of excellence

The rhetoric of “excellence” is pervasive across the academy. It is used to refer to research outputs as well as researchers, theory and education, individuals and organisations, from art history to zoology. But does “excellence” actually mean anything? Does this pervasive narrative of “excellence” do any good? Drawing on a range of sources we interrogate “excellence” as a concept and find that it has no intrinsic meaning in academia. Rather it functions as a linguistic interchange mechanism. To investigate whether this linguistic function is useful we examine how the rhetoric of excellence combines with narratives of scarcity and competition to show that the hypercompetition that arises from the performance of “excellence” is completely at odds with the qualities of good research. We trace the roots of issues in reproducibility, fraud, and homophily to this rhetoric. But we also show that this rhetoric is an internal, and not primarily an external, imposition. We conclude by proposing an alternative rhetoric based on soundness and capacity-building. In the final analysis, it turns out that that “excellence” is not excellent. Used in its current unqualified form it is a pernicious and dangerous rhetoric that undermines the very foundations of good research and scholarship

Measuring research impact: a large cancer research funding programme in Australia

Background: Measuring research impact is of critical interest to philanthropic and government funding agencies interested in ensuring that the research they fund is both scientifically excellent and has meaningful impact into health and other outcomes. The Beat Cancer Project (BCP) is a AUD $34 m cancer research funding scheme that commenced in 2011. It was initiated by an Australian charity (Cancer Council SA), and supported by the South Australian Government and the state’s major universities. Methods: This study applied Buxton and Hanney’s Payback Framework to assess research impact generated from the BCP after 3 years of funding. Data sources were an audit of peer-reviewed publications from January 2011 to September 2014 from Web of Knowledge and a self-report survey of investigators awarded BCP research funding during its first 3 years of implementation (2011–2013). Of the 104 surveys, 92 (88 Results: The BCP performed well across all five categories of the Payback Framework. In terms of knowledge production, 1257 peer-reviewed publications were generated and the mean impact factor of publishing journals increased annually. There were many benefits to future research with 21 respondents (23$1 that the cancer charity invested, the BCP gained an additional AUD $6.06. Five projects (5%) had informed policy and 5 (5%) informed product development, with an additional 31 (34%) and 35 (38%) projects, respectively, anticipating doing so. In terms of health and sector and broader economic benefits, 8 (9%) projects had influenced practice or behaviour of health staff and 32 (34%) would reportedly to do so in the future. Conclusions: Research impact was a priority of charity and government funders and led to a deliberate funding strategy. Emphasising research impact while maintaining rigorous, competitive processes can achieve the joint objectives of excellence in research, yielding good research impact and a high rate of leverage for philanthropic and public investment, as indicated by these early results

Intermittent control models of human standing: similarities and differences

Two architectures of intermittent control are compared and contrasted in the context of the single inverted pendulum model often used for describing standing in humans. The architectures are similar insofar as they use periods of open-loop control punctuated by switching events when crossing a switching surface to keep the system state trajectories close to trajectories leading to equilibrium. The architectures differ in two significant ways. Firstly, in one case, the open-loop control trajectory is generated by a system-matched hold, and in the other case, the open-loop control signal is zero. Secondly, prediction is used in one case but not the other. The former difference is examined in this paper. The zero control alternative leads to periodic oscillations associated with limit cycles; whereas the system-matched control alternative gives trajectories (including homoclinic orbits) which contain the equilibrium point and do not have oscillatory behaviour. Despite this difference in behaviour, it is further shown that behaviour can appear similar when either the system is perturbed by additive noise or the system-matched trajectory generation is perturbed. The purpose of the research is to come to a common approach for understanding the theoretical properties of the two alternatives with the twin aims of choosing which provides the best explanation of current experimental data (which may not, by itself, distinguish beween the two alternatives) and suggesting future experiments to distinguish between the two alternatives

Dietary Salt Levels Affect Salt Preference and Learning in Larval Drosophila

Drosophila larvae change from exhibiting attraction to aversion as the concentration of salt in a substrate is increased. However, some aversive concentrations appear to act as positive reinforcers, increasing attraction to an odour with which they have been paired. We test whether this surprising dissociation between the unconditioned and conditioned response depends on the larvae's experience of salt concentration in their food. We find that although the point at which a NaCl concentration becomes aversive shifts with different rearing experience, the dissociation remains evident. Testing larvae using a substrate 0.025M above the NaCl concentration on which the larvae were reared consistently results in aversive choice behaviour but appetitive reinforcement effects

Courtship Initiation Is Stimulated by Acoustic Signals in Drosophila melanogaster

Finding a mating partner is a critical task for many organisms. It is in the interest of males to employ multiple sensory modalities to search for females. In Drosophila melanogaster, vision is thought to be the most important courtship stimulating cue at long distance, while chemosensory cues are used at relatively short distance. In this report, we show that when visual cues are not available, sounds produced by the female allow the male to detect her presence in a large arena. When the target female was artificially immobilized, the male spent a prolonged time searching before starting courtship. This delay in courtship initiation was completely rescued by playing either white noise or recorded fly movement sounds to the male, indicating that the acoustic and/or seismic stimulus produced by movement stimulates courtship initiation, most likely by increasing the general arousal state of the male. Mutant males expressing tetanus toxin (TNT) under the control of Gr68a-GAL4 had a defect in finding active females and a delay in courtship initiation in a large arena, but not in a small arena. Gr68a-GAL4 was found to be expressed pleiotropically not only in putative gustatory pheromone receptor neurons but also in mechanosensory neurons, suggesting that Gr68a-positive mechanosensory neurons, not gustatory neurons, provide motion detection necessary for courtship initiation. TNT/Gr68a males were capable of discriminating the copulation status and age of target females in courtship conditioning, indicating that female discrimination and formation of olfactory courtship memory are independent of the Gr68a-expressing neurons that subserve gustation and mechanosensation. This study suggests for the first time that mechanical signals generated by a female fly have a prominent effect on males' courtship in the dark and leads the way to studying how multimodal sensory information and arousal are integrated in behavioral decision making