In support of “no-fault” civil liability rules for artificial intelligence

Abstract

Civil liability is traditionally understood as indirect market regulation, since the risk of incurring liability for damages gives incentives to invest in safety. Such an approach, however, is inappropriate in the markets of artificial intelligence devices. In fact, according to the current paradigm of civil liability, compensation is allowed only to the extent that “someone” is identified as a debtor. However, in many cases it would not be useful to impose the obligation to pay such compensation to producers and programmers: the algorithms, in fact, can “behave” far independently from the instructions initially provided by programmers so that they can err despite no flaw in design or implementation. Therefore, application of “traditional” civil liability to AI may represent a disincentive to new technologies based on artificial intelligence. This is why I think artificial intelligence requires that the law evolves, on this matter, from an issue of civil liability into one of financial management of losses. No-fault redress schemes could be an interesting and worthy regulatory strategy in order to enable this evolution. Of course, such schemes should apply only in cases where there is no evidence that producers and programmers have acted under conditions of negligence, imprudence or unskillfulness and their activity is adequately compliant with scientifically validated standards.