In Focus: Christapor Yacoubian asks whether current liability laws are adequate to address the use of nurse robots and chatbots

After secondary school, foreign languages were at the top of Christapor Yacoubian’s list of potential university majors. He has a flair for languages: besides his native German and Armenian, he also speaks English, French and Spanish. So he considered studying French and history at the University of Zurich and becoming a teacher. “I was fortunate enough to always have great teachers, so I wanted to become one myself,” says Yacoubian, who grew up in Schaffhausen.

Things turned out differently. Basel instead of Zurich, jurisprudence instead of teaching. Zurich, where many of his friends were studying, was too close for him. Yacoubian wanted to “get out of eastern Switzerland,” so he decided on Basel. He says he feels comfortable here, where there is more happening than in his hometown. And after all, he remained true to the Rhine, he notes with a grin. Though the Rhine here is very different from the Rhine there: “In Schaffhausen, we not only swim in the river; we also float down it on inflatable rafts. There is nothing more relaxing on a hot summer day.”

He calls his decision to study law a coincidence: the information session about Romance languages and literatures was not as promising as he had hoped, so he dropped by the session on law. He had taken economics and law in high school, but he had only a vague idea of what legal studies actually involved. “My decision was ultimately very intuitive and quite spontaneous,” he remarks. But he has not regretted the decision – quite the opposite.

Dry? More like multifaceted and complex.

A glance at Christapor Yacoubian’s achievements thus far is evidence enough that the subject suits him: award for the best bachelor’s thesis, award for the best master’s thesis... Is he ambitious? “Not too much. But I am disciplined and goal oriented. You can’t get along without that in our field.” The first thing he had to learn was how to study. It helps that he has a good memory and easily recognizes connections. His conclusion? “I have found the right path for me.”

He doesn’t find law at all dry. “When a case has to be decided, it’s rarely a black and white matter. What we consider right is influenced, among other things, by our values, and these are ultimately also subjective,” Yacoubian explains. For this reason, it often comes down not to right or wrong, but rather to how defensible a legal judgment is. “It’s an error to believe that a look at the legal code will always provide a clear answer. Students are surprised by this, especially in their first semester,” says the doctoral student, who also leads tutorials as an academic assistant.

What if the nursing robot causes damages?

Questions of judgment also play a role in Christapor Yacoubian’s dissertation. He is focused on the question of who bears responsibility when a digital system fails. A physician’s diagnosis supported by software, delivery of goods via a drone, or investment management by artificial intelligence: as increasingly complex or even fully autonomous systems are used for contract fulfillment, the likelihood increases of damage scenarios in which the technology does not work as desired. Consider, for example, a nurse robot that collides with a geriatric patient in a care home, or a chatbot used by an insurance company that provides false information. These scenarios demonstrate the need to clarify the legal circumstances in which the contract debtor who delegates their tasks to digital systems can be held liable in case of damages.

Yacoubian wants to find out whether our current legal system is pushed beyond its limits when it comes to questions of liability in the face of these digital developments, and whether lawmakers need to intervene. Based on the examples above, he maintains that, “according to the Swiss Code of Obligations, the contract debtor is responsible for any assistants they utilize. So, for example, the nursing home is responsible for misconduct by its nursing staff. If, in the digital age, robots or software agents are used instead of human agents, it must be considered whether this so-called auxiliary liability must not also reasonably be applied to digital agents.”