Law and Autonomous Machines: The Co-Evolution of Legal Responsibility and Technology

This book sets out a possible trajectory for the co-development of legal responsibility on the one hand and artificial intelligence and the machines and systems driven by it on the other.

As autonomous technologies become more sophisticated it will be harder to attribute harms caused by them to the humans who design or work with them. This will put pressure on legal responsibility and autonomous technologies to co-evolve. Mark Chinen illustrates how these factors strengthen incentives to develop even more advanced systems, which in turn strengthens nascent calls to grant legal and moral status to autonomous machines.

This book is a valuable resource for scholars and practitioners of legal doctrine, ethics, and autonomous technologies, as well as legislators and policy makers, and engineers and designers who are interested in the broader implications of their work.