#8 - Analysis of CQ Researcher Pro/Con discussion

Pro/Con question: Should Congress establish a Federal Robotics Commission?

The thesis of the Pro side: The U.S. Congress should establish a Federal Robotics Commission.

This side is defended by Ryan Calo, Assistant professor of law at the University of Washington.

His argument:

1. A number of foreign governments (Japan, South Korea, and the European Union) recognize that robotics is a transformative technology and have coordinated massive public-private partnerships in robotics and begun formally to develop legal and policy frameworks.  The U.S. is approaching robotics in a much more piecemeal way.  We could end up falling behind the rest of the world with our half-hearted approach to this new technology.
2. A Federal Robotics Commission would be a great way to accrue expertise on robotics to advise the U.S. government in how to approach this new technology.
3. While there might be other ways to accrue expertise on this technology than to create a Robotics Commission, a Federal Commission is the best way to attract the best experts on a particular technology; experts love to work on federal commissions.

Analysis:

The U.S. certainly doesn’t want to fall behind the rest of the world in its handling of an important new technology (in this case, robotics).  But while Calo’s argument supports the idea of the U.S. government developing expertise and investing in research on robotics, Calo hasn’t made a strong case for creating a whole new commission for this purpose.  It still isn’t clear that a Federal Robotics Commission is the best way to develop this expertise.  Federal bureaucracies have a bad reputation for being wasteful and inefficient, so Calo really needed to have done a better job of addressing this potential objection to creating a whole new federal bureaucracy.  He could have argued more forcefully just how potentially dangerous and economically significant robotics is; that might have better defended a large government role.