Three Laws Blog: Law and Artificial Intelligence

Tasioulas on The Rule of Algorithm and the Rule of Law @JTasioulas @BalliolOxford @EthicsinAI

John Tasioulas, University of Oxford, has published The Rule of Algorithm and the Rule of Law Vienna Lectures on Legal Philosophy (2023). Here is the abstract.

Can AI adjudicative tools in principle better enable us to achieve the rule of law by replacing judges? This article argues that answers to this question have been excessively focussed on 'output' dimensions of the rule of law - such as conformity of decisions with the applicable law - at the expense of vital 'process' considerations such as explainability, answerability, and reciprocity. These process considerations do not by themselves warrant the conclusion that AI adjudicative tools can never, in any context, properly replace human judges. But they help bring out the complexity of the issues - and the potential costs - that are involved in this domain.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Houser on AI and the Struggle Between Good and Evil @kimberlyhouser @washburnlj

Kimberly Houser, University of North Texas, is publishing Artificial Intelligence and The Struggle Between Good and Evil in volume 60 of the Washburn Law Journal. Here is the abstract.

Numerous reports have described—in great detail—the real and potential harms of the widespread development and adoption of artificial intelligence by both government and private industry. However, artificial intelligence has also been shown to create faster, more accurate and more equitable outcomes than humans in many situations. This seeming contradiction has led to dichotomous thinking describing artificial intelligence as either good or evil. Artificial intelligence, like all technological developments, is a tool: one that can be used—intentionally and sometimes, unintentionally—for good or for harm. The gray area comes into play when there is good or neutral intent that leads to a harmful result. This Essay is designed to help policymakers, investors, scholars, and students understand the multifaceted nature of artificial intelligence and the key challenges it presents and to caution against creating laws that prohibit AI programs outright rather than addressing the fundamental need to develop AI responsibly.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Selinger and Leong on The Ethics of Facial Recognition Technology @EvanSelinger @BrendaKLeong

Evan Selinger, Rochester Institute of Technology, Department of Philosophy, and Brenda Leong are publishing The Ethics of Facial Recognition Technology in The Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics (Carissa Velig, ed., Oxford, 2021). Here is the abstract.

This is a comprehensive presentation of leading ethical issues in debates about facial recognition technology. After defining basic terms (facial detection, facial characterization, facial verification, and facial identification), the following issues are discussed: standards, measures, and disproportionately distributed harms; erosions of trust; ethical harms associated with perfect facial surveillance; alienation, dehumanization, and loss of control; and the slippery slope debate.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Salyzyn on AI and Legal Ethics @AmySalyzyn @uocommonlaw

Amy Salyzyn, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law Common Law Section, is publishing AI and Legal Ethics in Artificial Intelligence and the Law in Canada (Florian Martin-Bariteau & Teresa Scassa, eds., Toronto: LexisNexis Canada, 2021).

Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered legal tools are beginning to be used in Canada by lawyers as well as directly by the public. This chapter outlines the risks and opportunities that arise from lawyer-use and public-use of legal AI tools, with an emphasis on the ethical duties of lawyers found in professional codes of conduct and the law societies’ regulatory mandate to prevent the unauthorized practice of law. Changes to professional codes of conduct, proactive law society measures, and new approaches to regulating public-use legal technology tools are discussed as potential means to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks arising from using AI to deliver legal services or to meet legal needs.

The full text is not available from SSRN. 

Parson, Fyshe, and Lizotte on AI's Societal Impacts, Governance, and Ethics @alonamarie @danlizotte

Edward A. Parson, UCLA School of Law, Alona Fyshe, University of Alberta, and Dan Lizotte, University of Western Ontario, have published Artificial Intelligence's Societal Impacts, Governance, and Ethics as UCLA School of Law PUblic Law Research Paper No. 19-44. Here is the abstract.

AI’s societal impacts and governance challenges carry high stakes but are deeply uncertain, due to uncertainties in both the characteristics and capabilities of the technologies and in how they will be developed, deployed, and used in social and political context. We provide an introduction and synthesis of discussions at the 2019 Summer Institute on AI and Society, an intense interdisciplinary exploration of these issues. The summer institute used an experimental model to promote informed discussions among a diverse international group of researchers, professionals, and students: one day of focused briefings, followed by two days of collaborative group work on projects proposed and selected by participants via a real-time decision process. The workgroups that emerged from this process examined a wide range of questions: embedded values in automated mobility systems; the concept of meaningful human control in complex human-machine decision systems; the prospect of AI systems replacing policy analysis in government decision-making; how AI challenges and changes conventional understandings of agency; the feasibility and requirements for AI to drive large-scale societal progress; and two distinct perspectives on the multiple sets of proposed AI ethical principles and attempts to make these operational: one a practical attempt to develop and specify such an operationalization, and one a critique of an existing operationalization recently proposed by an EU expert group. Workgroup discussions offered new insights on the risks posed to corollary or implicit values in present institutions or systems that may be inherent in automating or codifying decisions; the frequency with which seemingly prosaic matters of AI system design directly implicate deep political and moral issues; the value of a dialectical or adversarial approach to assessing impacts of AI systems or governance efforts; and the acute need for methods to assess and manage medium-term AI developments and impacts.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Surden on The Ethics of AI in Law: Basic Questions @HarrySurden

Harry Surden, University of Colorado Law School, is publishing The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: Basic Questions in the Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI (2020). Here is the abstract.

Ethical issues surrounding the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in law often share a common theme. As AI becomes increasingly integrated within the legal system, how can society ensure that core legal values are preserved? Among the most important of these legal values are: equal treatment under the law; public, unbiased, and independent adjudication of legal disputes; justification and explanation for legal outcomes; outcomes based upon law, principle, and facts rather than social status or power; outcomes premised upon reasonable, and socially justifiable grounds; the ability to appeal decisions and seek independent review; procedural fairness and due process; fairness in design and application of the law; public promulgation of laws; transparency in legal substance and process; adequate access to justice for all; integrity and honesty in creation and application of law; and judicial, legislative, and administrative efficiency. The use of AI in law may diminish or enhance how these values are actually expressed within the legal system or alter their balance relative to one another. This chapter surveys some of the most important ethical topics involving the use of AI within the legal system itself (but not its use within society more broadly) and examines how central legal values might unintentionally (or intentionally) change with increased use of AI in law.

Download the chapter from SSRN at the link.

Abbas, Senges, and Howard on A Hippocratic Oath for Technologists

Ali Abbas, Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making, Max Senges, Stanford University Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law; Google, Inc; and Ronald A. Howard, Stanford Graduate School of Business, are publishing A Hippocratic Oath for Technologists in Next Generation Ethics: Engineering a Better Society (2018). Here is the abstract.

This paper presents an ethical creed, which we refer to as the Hippocratic Oath for Technologists. The creed is built on three fundamental pillars: proactively understanding the ethical implications of technology for all stakeholders, telling the truth about the capabilities, advantages, and disadvantages of a technology, and acting responsibly in situations you find morally challenging. The oath may be taken by students at Universities after understanding its basic definitions and implications, and it may also be discussed with technology firms and human resources departments to provide the necessary support and understanding for their employees who wish to abide by the norms of this oath. This work lays the foundations for the arguments and requirements of a unified movement, as well as a forum for signing up for the oath to enable its wide-spread dissemination.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Davis on Law WIthout Mind: AI, Ethics, and Jurisprudence

Joshua P. Davis, University of San Francisco School of Law, has published Law Without Mind: AI, Ethics, and Jurisprudence. Here is the abstract.

Anything we can conceive that computers may do, it seems that they end up doing and that they end up doing it better than us and much sooner than we expected. They have gone from calculating mathematics for us to creating and maintaining our social networks to serving as our personal assistants. We are told they may soon become our friends and make life and death decisions driving our cars. Perhaps they will also take over interpreting our laws. It is not that hard to conceive of computers doing so to the extent legal interpretation involves mere description or prediction. It is much harder to conceive of computers making substantive moral judgments. So the ultimate bulwark against ceding legal interpretation to computers—from having computers usurp the responsibility and authority of attorneys, citizens, and even judges—may be to recognize the role of moral judgment in saying what the law is. That possibility connects the cutting edge with the traditional. The central dispute in jurisprudence for the past half century or more has been about the role of morality in legal interpretation. Suddenly, that dispute has great currency and urgency. Jurisprudence may help us to clarify and circumscribe the role of computers in our legal system. And contemplating AI may help us to resolve jurisprudential debates that have vexed us for decades. Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Baum on Social Ethics in Artificial Intelligence @SethBaum

Seth D. Baum, Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, is publishing Social Choice Ethics in Artificial Intelligence in AI & Society. Here is the abstract.

A major approach to the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) is to use social choice, in which the AI is designed to act according to the aggregate views of society. This is found in the AI ethics of “coherent extrapolated volition” and “bottom-up ethics”. This paper shows that the normative basis of AI social choice ethics is weak due to the fact that there is no one single aggregate ethical view of society. Instead, the design of social choice AI faces three sets of decisions: standing, concerning whose ethics views are included; measurement, concerning how their views are identified; and aggregation, concerning how individual views are combined to a single view that will guide AI behavior. These decisions must be made up front in the initial AI design — designers cannot “let the AI figure it out”. Each set of decisions poses difficult ethical dilemmas with major consequences for AI behavior, with some decision options yielding pathological or even catastrophic results. Furthermore, non-social choice ethics face similar issues, such as whether to count future generations or the AI itself. These issues can be more important than the question of whether or not to use social choice ethics. Attention should focus on these issues, not on social choice.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Sharkey on Robots and Moral Agency @sheffielduni

Amanda Sharkey, Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, has published Can robots be responsible moral agents? And why should we care? at 29 Connection Science 210 (2017). Here is the abstract.

This principle highlights the need for humans to accept responsibility for robot behaviour and in that it is commendable. However, it raises further questions about legal and moral responsibility. The issues considered here are (i) the reasons for assuming that humans and not robots are responsible agents, (ii) whether it is sufficient to design robots to comply with existing laws and human rights and (iii) the implications, for robot deployment, of the assumption that robots are not morally responsible.

The full text is available from Taylor & Francis Online at the link.