Why Law Needs a New Entity to Govern AI Agents

Yonathan A. Arbel, Simon Goldstein, Peter N. Salib

This piece was originally published in The CLS Blue Sky Blog.

AI no longer just answers questions. The new systems, called AI agents, take autonomous actions: They book travel, write and run code, move money, and even run a cafe. Soon there will be billions of them, swarming, merging, splitting, and dissolving at machine speed. And just as soon, people will be harmed. Then law will face a deceptively simple question: Which AI did it?

Authors

Yonathan A. Arbel

Yonathan A. Arbel is a Senior Research Affiliate at LawAI and the William Alfred Rose Professor of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law, where he directs the AI Legal Studies Initiative and co-directs CLAIR, the Center for Law & AI Risk. His research combines doctrinal, economic, empirical, and socio-legal methods to study contracts, consumer markets, private law, and the governance of advanced AI systems, including AI agents, legal interpretation, adjudication, and liability.

Peter N. Salib

Peter N. Salib is a Visiting Senior Fellow at LawAI, and one of the nation's leading scholars on the law of frontier artificial intelligence. Peter's research focuses on how highly capable AI systems can be integrated into our existing rule-of-law order to reduce the risk of catastrophic harm from advanced AI.

Authors

Further reading

How to Count AIs: Individuation and Liability for AI Agents

The Limits of Regulating AI Safety Through Liability and Insurance

Automated Compliance and the Regulation of AI