The human factor in AI regulation with artificial intelligence: ensuring accountability

As artificial intelligence (ai) technology continues to advance and permeate various aspects of society, it poses significant challenges to existing legal frameworks. A recurring question is how the law should regulate entities that lack intentions. Traditional legal principles often rely on the concept of mens rea, or the mental state of the actor, to determine liability in areas such as free speech, copyright, and criminal law. However, ai agents, as they currently exist, do not possess intentions in the same way as humans. This presents a potential loophole where the use of ai could be exempt from liability simply because these systems lack the necessary mental state.

A new article from Yale Law School, 'The law of ai is Ris's lawk and Agents without Intentions,' addresses this critical issue by proposing the use of objective standards to regulate ai. These standards are drawn from various parts of the law that attribute intent to actors or hold them to objective standards of conduct. The central argument is that ai programs should be seen as tools used by humans and organizations, holding these humans and organizations responsible for the actions of the ai. We need to understand that the traditional legal framework depends on the actor's mental state to determine liability, which is not applicable to ai agents that lack intentions. Therefore, the document suggests moving to objective standards to close this gap. The author argues that humans and organizations using ai should take responsibility for any harm caused, similar to how directors are responsible for their agents. Additionally, he emphasizes imposing duties of reasonable care and risk reduction on those who design, implement, and use ai technologies. Clear legal norms and standards need to be established to ensure that companies dealing with ai internalize the costs associated with the risks their technologies impose on society.

The article presents an interesting comparison between ai agents and the principal-agent relationship in Tort Law, which provides a valuable framework for understanding how liability should be assigned in the context of ai technologies. In tort law, principals are held liable for the actions of their agents when those actions are taken on behalf of the principal. let the superior answer is a specific application of this principle, whereby employers are liable for torts committed by their employees in the course of their employment. When individuals or organizations use ai systems, these systems can be considered agents acting on their behalf. The central idea is that legal liability for the actions of ai agents should be attributed to the human principals who employ them. This ensures that individuals and businesses cannot escape liability by simply using ai to perform tasks that would otherwise be performed by human agents.

Therefore, since ai agents lack intentions, the law should hold them and their human managers to objective standards that include:

• Negligence: ai systems must be designed with reasonable care.
• Strict Liability: In certain high-risk applications, such as fiduciary duties, the highest level of care may be required.
• No reduced duty of care: Replacing a human agent with an ai agent should not result in a reduced duty of care. For example, if an ai enters into a contract on behalf of a principal, the principal remains fully responsible for the terms and consequences of the contract.

The article also analyzes and addresses the challenge of regulating ai programs, which inherently lack intentions, within existing legal frameworks that often rely on the concept of mens rea (the actor's mental state) to assign responsibility. He says that in traditional legal contexts, the law sometimes attributes intentions to entities that lack clear human intentions, such as corporations or associations, and forces actors to meet external standards of behavior, regardless of their actual intentions. Therefore, the article suggests that the law should treat ai programs as having intentions, assuming that they intend the reasonable and foreseeable consequence of their actions. This approach would hold ai systems accountable for outcomes in a manner similar to how human actors are treated in certain legal contexts. The article also discusses the issue of applying subjective standards, which are typically used to protect human freedom, to ai programs. He says the main argument is that ai programs lack the individual autonomy and political freedom that justify the use of subjective standards for human actors. He gives the example of First Amendment protection, which balances the rights of speakers and hearers. However, ai speech protection based on listeners' rights does not justify the application of subjective standards, since ai lacks subjective intentions. Therefore, since ai lacks subjective intentions, the law should attribute intentions to ai programs on the assumption that they intend reasonable and foreseeable consequences of their actions. The law should apply objective standards of behavior to ai programs based on what a reasonable person would do in similar circumstances, including the use of reasonableness standards.

The paper/report presents two practical applications of regulating ai programs using objective standards: defamation and copyright infringement. It explores how objective standards and reasonable regulation can address liability issues arising from ai technologies. The problem addressed here is how to determine liability for ai technologies, focusing specifically on large language models (LLMs) that may produce harmful or infringing content.

The key components of the applications it analyzes are:

• Defamatory hallucinations:

LLMs can generate false and defamatory content when asked, but unlike humans, they lack intent, making traditional defamation rules inapplicable. They should be treated in a manner analogous to products with a defective design. Product designers should be expected to implement safeguards to reduce the risk of defamatory content. Additionally, if an ai agent acts as a promoter, a product liability approach applies. Human promoters are liable if they post defamatory material generated by LLM, and standard defamation laws are amended to take into account the nature of ai. Users should exercise reasonable care in designing messages and verify the accuracy of ai-generated content, refraining from disseminating known or reasonably suspected false and defamatory material.

Concerns about copyright infringement have led to multiple lawsuits against artificial intelligence companies. LLMs may generate content that infringes copyrighted material, raising questions about fair use and liability. Therefore, to address this ai, companies can obtain licenses from copyright holders to use their works in training and generating new content and establishing a collective rights organization could facilitate general licenses, but this approach has limitations due to the diverse and dispersed nature of copyright holders. . Additionally, ai companies should be required to take reasonable steps to reduce the risk of copyright infringement as a condition of a fair use defense.

Conclusion:

This research article explores the legal liability of ai technologies using agency law principles, imputed intentions, and objective standards. By treating ai actions similarly to those of human agents under agency law, we emphasize that principals must take responsibility for the actions of their ai agents, ensuring that the duty of care is not diminished.