Machine or Robot? Thoughts on the Legal Notion of Autonomy in the Context of Self-Driving Vehicles and Intelligent Machines

As machines, and namely vehicles, become increasingly independent and capable of tasks ever-growing in complexity, uncertainties rise concerning which legal framework they should be included into. Indeed, from a legal standpoint, one of the most disruptive features of these artificial agents is widely considered to be their capability of defining their course of action, in order to pursue a given task, independently from direct human control and as a consequence of the challenges and characteristics of the environment they are operating in. Aiming to provide some much-needed clarity in this area, this paper addresses the necessity of reaching a narrower legal notion of autonomy, avoiding relying solely on its technical definitions. Accordingly, this paper will: (i) analyze the meaning of autonomy in the context of autonomous vehicles and attempt to identify its structural characteristics; (ii) address the most legally challenging properties of such systems i.e., “Self-Determination” and “independence from Human Control”; and (iii) after pointing out some overlapping aspects between the factual behavior of autonomous vehicles and clerks appointed for merely executionary tasks, attempt to strengthen the existing EU legal notion of autonomy applicable to artificial agents.