Artificial intelligence: legal and ethical aspects

Abstract

Ethical norms and the law are indispensably linked in the modern society. The adoption of major legal decisions is affected by various ethical rules. Artificial intelligence transforms the indicated problems into a new dimension. The systems that use artificial intelligence are becoming more autonomous by complexity of the tasks they accomplish, and their potential implications on the external environment. This diminishes the human ability to comprehend, predict, and control their activity. People usually underestimate the actual level of the autonomy of such systems. It is underlined that the machines based on artificial intelligence can learn from the own experience, and perform actions that are not meant by the developers. This leads to certain ethical and legal difficulties that are discussed in this article. In view of the specificity of artificial intelligence, the author makes suggestions on the direct responsibility of particular systems. Based on this logic, there are no fundamental reasons that prevent the autonomous should be held legally accountable for their actions. However, the question on the need or advisability to impose such type of responsibility (at the present stage specifically) remains open. This is partially due to the ethical issues listed above. It might be more effective to hold programmers or users of the autonomous systems accountable for the actions of these systems. However, it may decelerate innovations. This is namely why there is a need to find a perfect balance.