A new report by the Law Commission has addressed a range of legal AI issues, including: should AI be granted a ‘separate legal personality’? This may sound a bit Sci-Fi, but as the UK body – which is a very serious bunch of people – explained, legal personality already exists for ‘a range of entities’.
They go on to say that: ‘[Which] entities have legal personality can change over time. It is often theorised as a bundle of rights and obligations, including:
the ability to own property,
to acquire rights and owe obligations in relation to others’ rights,
to enter contracts,
and to sue and be sued in the legal person’s own name.’
‘However, it is possible for different categories of legal persons to have different bundles of rights and obligations. Corporations do not have the same rights and obligations as natural persons.’
As more agentic and AI reasoning systems are adopted does this eventually move into the territory explored above? And if so, what happens then? One can certainly see the corporates of the future using AI to make critical decisions, or at least where if you follow back the decision tree of a corporate you may find an AI is at the root of a certain action, perhaps connecting to the interpretation of a contract or regulation.
And thus, if AI is actively playing a meaningful ‘legal’ role, do we then at some point in the future have to recognise it formally?
The Law Commission then considers the arguments for and against giving AI such a personality. One key reason to do so, they say, is to cover liability – and that makes a lot of sense.
Although, as it stands, law firms for example retain full responsibility for what they do, even if tech is used on a project. So….would that change the dynamic here? Could law firms say: ‘Well, X AI system has a ‘legal personality’, so it’s not our fault the contract we sent you caused a lot of trouble,’ ? And if so, what happens to the vendors? Do they want that risk and pressure?
The Law Commision concludes that we are still too early to grant such status….but…..
‘It is also not clear presently that any AI systems are sufficiently advanced to warrant being granted legal personality. However, AI technology continues to progress. Depending on the pace of that development, the option of granting some AI systems legal personality is likely increasingly to be considered,’ they add.
What do you think?
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More broadly, Chair of the Law Commission, Sir Peter Fraser, commented: ‘AI is developing rapidly and being used in an increasingly wide variety of applications, from automated driving to diagnosing health conditions. This is likely to continue and the degree to which AI will impact the daily life of our society is very considerable. However, with AI’s potential benefits comes potential harm. It is important that the laws of England and Wales evolve so that they are up to the task of the many changes being wrought by AI. The purpose of this paper is to increase awareness of the potential impacts of AI on the law and to encourage discussion of these issues as a step towards future law reform, where it is required.’
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You can find the full paper here.
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