Hi-Tech Crime CRIM30375

Who’s to blame when driverless cars have an accident? Raja Jurdak , CSIRO and Salil S. Kanhere , UNSW The news that an Uber self-driving vehicle has killed a pedestrian in the US has made headlines around the world. It’s a reminder that the era of self-driving cars is fast approaching. Decades of research into advanced sensors, mapping, navigation and control methods have now come to fruition and autonomous cars are starting to hit the roads in pilot trials . But partial or full autonomy raises the question of who is to blame in the case of an accident involving a self-driving car? In conventional (human-driven) cars, the answer is simple: the driver is responsible because they are in control. When it comes to autonomous vehicles, it isn’t so clear cut. We propose a blockchain-based framework that uses sensor data to ascertain liability in accidents involving self-driving cars. Read more: We must plan the driverless city to avoid being hostage to t...

Technology and regulation must work in concert to combat hate speech online Technology can help identify hate speech online, but it’s not a silver bullet solution. Shutterstock Andre Oboler , La Trobe University Online bullying, hate and incitement are on the rise , and new approaches are needed to tackle them. As the Australian Senate conducts hearings for its Inquiry into cyberbullying, it should consider a two-pronged approach to combating the problem. First, the government should follow the lead of Germany in imposing financial penalties on major social media companies if they fail to reduce the volume of abusive content on their platforms. Second, we must develop ways of correctly identifying and measuring the amount of abusive content being posted and removed to ensure that companies are complying. Given the volume of data on social media, artificial intelligence (AI) must be a part of the mix in supporting regulation, but ...

Do drones deserve their dire reputation? Depends who is flying them shutterstock Jonathan Aitken , University of Sheffield Whether they are dropping drugs into prison yards, narrowly avoiding passenger aircraft or invading the privacy of unsuspecting homeowners, drones have been hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons. There has been an explosion in the popularity of commercially available drones in recent years. Google Images and other photography sites are now flooded with high-contrast aerial shots and gleaming panoramas, all sourced from invariably high-resolution on-board cameras. But these spectacular views have come at a price. Drones have gained a poor reputation, especially in cities. As the name suggests, drones give off a distinctive and often unpleasant humming sound that can reverberate through densely populated areas. On a more sinister note, drones can furtively peep through the windows of any residence like a ...

Drones are more than killing machines, but what happens when they become intelligent? Look ma, no guns. Wildnrg , CC BY-SA Andy Miah , University of Salford You will be forgiven if you missed the Drones for Good competition held recently in Dubai, Despite drone technology really taking off commercially in the last year or so (the potential puns are endless) they remain a relatively niche interest. Drones – or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as they are increasingly known – have reached a mass-market tipping point. You can buy them on the high street for the price of a smartphone and, despite a large DIY Drone community, the out-of-the-box versions are pretty extraordinary, fitted with built-in cameras and “follow me” technology , where your drone will follow you as you walk, run, surf, or hang-glide. Their usefulness to professional filmmakers has led to the first New York Drone Film Festival to be held in March 2015. Technologicall...

Samantha's suffering: why sex machines should have rights too Fossiant/Shutterstock.com Victoria Brooks , University of Westminster Late in 2017 at a tech fair in Austria, a sex robot was reportedly “ molested ” repeatedly and left in a “filthy” state. The robot, named Samantha, received a barrage of male attention, which resulted in her sustaining two broken fingers. This incident confirms worries that the possibility of fully functioning sex robots raises both tantalising possibilities for human desire (by mirroring human/sex-worker relationships), as well as serious ethical questions . So what should be done? The campaign to “ban” sex robots, as the computer scientist Kate Devlin has argued , is only likely to lead to a lack of discussion. Instead, she hypothesises that many ways of sexual and social inclusivity could be explored as a result of human-robot relationships. To be sure, there are certain elements of relationships...

It could be time to start thinking about a cybernetic Bill of Rights Mike Ryder , Lancaster University Like it or loathe it, the robot revolution is now well underway and the futures described by writers such as Isaac Asimov , Frederik Pohl and Philip K. Dick are fast turning from science fiction into science fact . But should robots have rights? And will humanity ever reach a point where human and machine are treated the same? At the heart of the debate is that most fundamental question: what does it mean to be human? Intuitively, we all think we know what this means – it almost goes without saying. And yet, as a society, we regularly dehumanise others, and cast them as animal or less than human – what philosopher Giorgio Agamben describes as “bare life”. Take the homeless for example. People who the authorities treat much like animals, or less than animals (like pests) who need to be guarded against with anti-homeless spikes and ben...