Risk

Online
Essay
The Law of AI is the Law of Risky Agents Without Intentions
Ian Ayres
Oscar M. Ruebhausen Professor, Yale Law School.
Jack M. Balkin
Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment, Yale Law School.

 Harran Deu provided helpful research assistance.

A recurrent problem in adapting law to artificial intelligence (AI) programs is how the law should regulate the use of entities that lack intentions. Many areas of the law, including freedom of speech, copyright, and criminal law, make liability turn on whether the actor who causes harm (or creates a risk of harm) has a certain intention or mens rea. But AI agents—at least the ones we currently have—do not have intentions in the way that humans do. If liability turns on intention, that might immunize the use of AI programs from liability. We think that the best solution is to employ objective standards that are familiar in many different parts of the law. These legal standards either ascribe intention to actors or hold them to objective standards of conduct.

Best Practices Delegation Machine Learning Oversight Risk Technology Technology Regulation
2
Article
76.1
A Market in Litigation Risk
Jonathan T. Molot
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

My thanks to Michael Abramowicz, Brad Clark, John Duffy, Howell Jackson, Geoffrey Miller, Richard Nagareda, Robert Rhee, Bill Rubenstein, Anthony Sebok, Mark Spindel, and participants in faculty workshops at Harvard Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, and George Washington University Law School.

Business Organizations Insurance Law and Economics Risk
Online
Article
79.3
Allocating Pollution
Arden Rowell
Assistant Professor, Richard W. and Marie L. Corman Scholar, University of Illinois College of Law

Many thanks to Michael Abramowicz, Amitai Aviram, Eric Biber, Ralph Brubaker, Thomas Colby, Dan Cole, John Colombo, Dhammika Dharmapala, Kirsten Engel, Lee Fennell, David Fontana, Eric Freyfogle, Robert Glicksman, Shi-Ling Hsu, Bruce Huber, Heidi Hurd, Christine Hurt, David Hyman, Charles Imohiosen, Eric Johnson, Robin Juni, Richard Kaplan, Robin Kar, Patrick Keenan, Dan Kelly, Jay Kesan, Scott Kieff, William Kovacic, Robert Lawless, Michael Livermore, Tim Malloy, Jonathan Masur, Jud Mathews, Brian McCall, Emily Meazell, John Nagle, Jonathan Nash, Lee Paddock, Richard Pierce, Jeffrey Pojanowski, Dara Purvis, Andrew Reeves, Larry Ribstein, Richard Ross, J.B. Ruhl, Steven Schooner, Karen Bradshaw Schulz, Justin Sevier, Jamelle Sharpe, Nicola Sharpe, Paul Stancil, Suja Thomas, Robert Tuttle, Lesley Wexler, Jonathan Wiener and Verity Winship for their comments and suggestions. Thanks also to the editors of The University of Chicago Law Review, including Liz Austin, Brad Hubbard, and Matt Rozen, for outstanding editorial support.

Environmental Law Law and Economics Risk
Print
Article
84.4
Regulation by Threat: Dodd-Frank and the Nonbank Problem
Daniel Schwarcz
Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School

Portions of this Article draw on the authors’ testimony to Congress and amicus briefs in MetLife, Inc v FSOC. For helpful comments and suggestions, we thank Hilary Allen, Chris Brummer, Peter Conti-Brown, Jeff Gordon, Claire Hill, Bob Hockett, Brett McDonald, Saule Omarova, Richard Painter, Christina Skinner, and Margaret Tahyar, and the audiences at presentations at Cambridge, Oxford, Columbia Business School, the University of Connecticut, the University of Minnesota, Georgetown Law Center, Wharton, and the Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research. Thanks to Jayme Wiebold for research assistance.

David Zaring
Associate Professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

The global financial crisis was much more than a disaster for banks.

Business Organizations Dodd-Frank Financial Regulation Institutional Design Insurance Risk Securities Law

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