This book takes up the contentious issue of artificial intelligence (AI), and more specifically the evolving nature of AI-mindedness, as a legal entity in society. With the increasing potential of AI suggested by the recent surge in creative and administrative tools and large language models, there is a growing concern about the ethical and legal implications of incorporating AI into society. As these systems become even more powerful and their ability to mimic human output grows, the question of whether and how to attribute mental states to AI, even in its most nascent form, has become a pressing concern. It is, for example, unclear what kind of mind AI might be capable of and therefore what the proper legal analogy might be for how we attribute reasoning capability, intent, responsibility, liability, agency, and so on, to it. This book contributes to this new and important area by bringing together front-line research from diverse fields on the topic of understanding ‘AI-mindedness’, and how it – and our relationship to it – might be regulated. Through a collection of chapters, written by experts from law, public administration, tort, psychoanalysis, philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and political theory, this volume offers an insightful examination of current research, theoretical frameworks, and practical applications that are shaping the AI–human relationship. This book will be of considerable interest to scholars and researchers working in legal theory, socio-legal studies, law and technology, and science and technology studies.
Table of Contents:
Part I Introduction: AI Agents in Law’s Empire: An Introduction to Law and the AI-Human Relationship Chapter 1: Large language models and linguistic understanding Chapter 2: The Myth of Artificial Creative Agency Chapter 3: The human free will debate, autonomous artificial systems, and artificial suffering Part II Chapter 4: Children as the others of technology regulation Chapter 5: Engaging with non-minds and hybrid others. Philosophical perspectives on AI and automated decision-making Chapter 6: “I'm sorry to hear that you are feeling bad”: The artificiality and otherness of chatbot interaction in digital public administration Part III Chapter 7: Two Routes to Legal Personhood for AI Entities Chapter 8: Legal Personhood for AI Systems? Chapter 9: Merging with AI: subtle consequences and dubious agency Part IV Chapter 10: Legal Personality for AI Systems and Robots From a Belgian Civil (Extra-Contractual) Liability Perspective – Some Food for (Interdisciplinary) Debate Chapter 11: Criminal Justice, Artificial Intelligence, and Parity in Sentencing Chapter 12: Rule-based AI as Transparent, Accountable and Adaptable Computational Interpretations of Law Part V Chapter 13: If humans and AI disagree: A political approach to existential risk Chapter 14: The Democratic Agency of AI Chapter 15: The rule of law after the Anthropocene
