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Comment by Larrikin | Hacker News Reader

Why would you think that shooting and killing someone, except with a robot, would not be covered by current laws?

It gets a lot trickier with an autonomous robot. Who is response for the death? The owner? What if the owner is a foreign corporation? Or even a known foreign person who has never been in the United States? If a remote crime is committed on your behalf by a robot, are you culpable?

There are a lot of open questions here that need some sort of resolution.

At some point there's someone who pressed the on button on that autonomous robot. Seems to me doing that isn't too different from pressing launch on a rocket or the trigger on a gun.

Sure, but what if that person was never in the country and isn't subject to the country's laws? Imagine the robot is shipped, on, by DHL. DHL drops off the box on the porch and leaves. The robot opens the box itself from the inside.

DHL is already indemnified as a package delivery service.

Do you believe that if someone in Canada ships a bomb to someone in the US an investigation between the two countries wouldn't be done?

From Canada to the US? Probably. But what about a crate that come from Russia? Or Brazil? Or Saudi Arabia?

There might be an investigation, but they aren't extraditing anyone!

Because US laws have all sorts of rigid, incomplete, flawed, and contradicting provisions around whom is legally allowed to kill whom and under what circumstances.

It’s generally frowned upon.

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