Research: Artificial Intelligence and the Attribution Crisis of Tort Law
There has been much discussion regarding the ability of tort law to overcome the issues of artificial intelligence (AI). Most studies present the problem as a liability gap and concentrate on finding out who is responsible or how to adjust liability doctrines to compensate the victim. In this paper, it will be claimed that these perspectives tackle not the cause but the consequences of the problem. The emergence of advanced AI technology has created an attribution crisis rather than a liability gap in tort law by making the premises of tort law, including causation and individual responsibility, hard to apply. In this paper, the premises of tort law are discussed. It then discusses existing legal frameworks such as liability for products, vicarious liability, strict liability, and risk regulation. Even though these measures can help in distributing liability among stakeholders, they fail to provide a solution to the attribution problem. Finally, the article considers more general theoretical approaches like collective responsibility, distributed liability, and systems models of legal attribution. In the end, it is argued that any future discussion on the topic should be based on a proper theory of legal attribution rather than on the term "gap" in liability. As Pagallo argues, AI increasingly calls into question legal concepts applicable to humans and traditional technology. (Pagallo 2013).