Artificial general intelligence and contract

Linarelli, John

Abstract

The aim of this article is to inquire whether contract law can operate in a state of affairs in which artificial general intelligence (AGI) exists and has the cog-nitive abilities to interact with humans to exchange promises or otherwise en-gage in the sorts of exchanges typically governed by contract law. AGI is a long way off but its emergence may be sudden and come in the lifetimes of some people alive today. How might contract law adapt to a situation in which at least one of the contract parties could, from the standpoint of capacity to engage in promising and exchange, be an AGI? This is not a situation in which AI operates as an agent of a human or a firm, a frequent occurrence right now. Rather, the question is whether an AGI could constitute a principal – a contract party on its own. Contract law is a good place to start a discussion about adapt-ing the law for an AGI future because it already incorporates a version of what is known as weak AI in its objective standard for contract formation and inter-pretation. Contract law in some limited sense takes on issues of relevance from philosophy of mind. AGI holds the potential to transform a solution to an epis-temological problem of how to prove a contract exists into solution to an onto-logical problem about the capacity to contract. An objection might be that con-tract law presupposes the existence of a person the law recognizes as pos-sessing the capacity to contract. Contract law itself may not be able to answer the prior question of legally recognized personhood. The answer will be to fo-cus on how AGI cognitive architecture could be designed for compatibility for human interaction. This article focuses on that question as well.

Citation

Linarelli, J. (2019). Artificial general intelligence and contract. Uniform Law Review, 24(2), 330-347. https://doi.org/10.1093/ulr/unz015

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 2, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Jun 9, 2019
• Publication Date: Jun 9, 2019
• Deposit Date: Apr 2, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 9, 2021
• Journal: Uniform Law Review
• Print ISSN: 1124-3694
• Electronic ISSN: 2050-9065
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 330-347
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ulr/unz015
• Keywords: contract, contract formation, artificial intelligence, advanced artificial intelligence, AI ethics
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1299487