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93 U. Colo. L. Rev. 51 (2022)
Robophobia

handle is hein.journals/ucollr93 and id is 63 raw text is: ROBOPHOBIA ANDREW KEANE WOODS* Robots-machines, algorithms, artificial intelligence-play an increasingly important role in society, often supplementing or even replacing human judgment. Scholars have rightly be- come concerned with the fairness, accuracy, and humanity of these systems. Indeed, anxiety about machine bias is at a fever pitch. While these concerns are important, they nearly all run in one direction: we worry about robot bias against humans; we rarely worry about human bias against robots. This is a mistake. Not because robots deserve, in some deonto- logical sense, to be treated fairly-although that may be true-but because our bias against nonhuman deciders is bad for us. For example, it would be a mistake to reject self-driving cars merely because they cause a single fatal accident. Yet all too often this is what we do. We tolerate enormous risk from our fellow humans but almost none from machines. A sub- stantial literature-almost entirely ignored by legal scholars concerned with algorithmic bias-suggests that we routinely prefer worse-performing humans over better-performing ro- bots. We do this on our roads, in our courthouses, in our mili- tary, and in our hospitals. Our bias against robots is costly, and it will only get more so as robots become more capable. This Article catalogs the many different forms of antirobot bias and suggests some reforms to curtail the harmful effects of that bias. The Article's descriptive contribution is to develop a taxonomy of robophobia. Its normative contribution is to of- fer some reasons to be less biased against robots. The stakes could hardly be higher. We are entering an age when one of * Professor of Law, University of Arizona. The author thanks Jane Bambauer, Dan Rodriguez, Albertina Antognini, Tammi Walker, Alan Rozenshtein, Jess Find- ley, Mark Lemley, Kiel Brennan-Marquez, Dave Pozen, Shalev Roisman, Derek Bambauer, Marc Miller, Chris Robertson, and workshop participants at Harvard University, the University of Arizona, and Arizona State University. The author is grateful to the editors of the Colorado Law Review, especially Ming Lee Newcomb and Brendan Soane, for their diligence and care. Comments welcome: akwoods@ar- izona.edu.

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