Today’s CBA E-News contains a link to a report described as:

The CBA’s Ethics and Professional Responsibility Committee presents a new report interpreting the CBA’s Code of Professional Conduct in the context of the new media. Your presence in the e-world: Guidelines for Ethical Marketing Practices Using New Information Technologies covers everything from e-mail tag lines to blog etiquette to web-based lawyer referral services.

It is only a guideline – as provincial law society rules are what actually govern. For the most part, it encourages lawyers to use social media – but cautions that the usual rules apply.

For example. Avoid claims about competence, guaranteed results, or fees. Don’t mislead, and don’t do anything that is undignified or offensive. It also reminds of the differences between giving legal information, vs. giving legal advice.

One comment caught my eye as being impractical if taken literally:

A web site, blog, posting on a social networking site, and other e-communications should always identify the jurisdiction(s) where the lawyer is licenced to practice. The geographic location of the lawyer’s office and the province or territory licencing the lawyer’s practice should have a place of prominence that can readily be seen by site visitors.

Including one’s location in every Tweet, or in every comment one makes on other sites just won’t work. One would hope that in practice it would be sufficient if one’s location is in, for example, one’s Twitter profile. Or if we comment on another site and identify ourselves, that a link back to our blog, or giving our Twitter name would suffice.

1.  A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2.  A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3.  A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The article starts by saying:

“Two years ago, a military robot used in the South African army killed nine soldiers after a malfunction. Earlier this year, a Swedish factory was fined after a robot machine injured one of the workers (though part of the blame was assigned to the worker). Robots have been found guilty of other smaller offenses such as an incorrectly responding to a request.

So how do you prevent problems like this from happening? Stop making psychopathic robots, say robot experts.

“If you build artificial intelligence but don’t think about its moral sense or create a conscious sense that feels regret for doing something wrong, then technically it is a psychopath,” says Josh Hall, a scientist who wrote the book Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of a Machine.”

The article refers to a paper entitled Toward the Human-Robot Co-Existance Society: On Safety Intelligence for Next Generation Robots recently published in the International Journal of Social Robotics.

Take a look at the article to see what they have in mind – after all, we need to get this sorted out before we have a Cylon problem.