Self-Driving Laws | Rule of Law Problems and the Machine Regulation Thesis

En anglais seulement.

The spectre of artificial intelligence over the rule of law is readily apparent in proposals for “self-driving laws”: the idea that we might regulate society by machine. Some academics have posited an approaching “legal singularity”, in which legal knowledge becomes a complete data set and uncertainty is rendered obsolete. This perspective, I argue, misses an important point by assuming machines can necessarily outperform humans, without first questioning what such performance entails and whether machines can meaningfully be said to participate in the activities of interpreting and applying the law. Nor have these scholars asked what ideals we truly value in our legal system and what those ideals mean from a human standpoint. In this discussion, I focus on how the rule of law is made vulnerable by technological innovations that take power previously delegated to administrative decision-makers and reassigned to machines. I argue that we need to interrogate the potential impacts of artificial intelligence innovations in the legal process, since their application and wide-ranging impacts might erode certain fundamental ideals.

Ce contenu a été mis à jour le 1 septembre 2020 à 14 h 22 min.