AI & Law: Using Legal Fiction To Punish AI

Stretching the use of legal fiction to go after wayward AI

by Dr. Lance B. Eliot

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Key briefing points about this article:

• Courts use the mechanism of legal fiction to help smooth out rough spots in the law
• A legal fiction is an assumption or acceptance of something as fact, though it might not be
• Some are proposing that AI ought to be covered via a newly conceived legal fiction
• In brief, AI would get a form of legal personhood but only in the legal fiction semblance
• This has generated intense debate and continues to be bandied about

Introduction

In the law, sometimes there is a need to craft a somewhat fictional aspect for purposes of allowing the wheels of justice to spin freely and not get unduly gummed up.

That’s where legal fiction can handily come to play.

Per the definition of the Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute (LII), a legal fiction is formally denoted as “an assumption and acceptance of something as…