MALPRACTICE BY THE AUTONOMOUS AI PHYSICIAN by Mindy Nunez Duffourc
AI is currently capable of making autonomous medical decisions, like diagnosis and prognosis, without the input of humans. Liability for this “practice of medicine” by an Autonomous AI Physician currently falls in a tort law gap when it cannot be sufficiently connected to humans involved with the AI because neither human-centric nor product-centric causes of action provide a mechanism for recovery. To fill this liability gap, this Article proposes a framework that governs liability under existing tort law by focusing on control of the AI’s injury-causing output to assign liability to creators, organizations, individual providers, and the Autonomous AI Physician with limited legal personhood. Other scholars have suggested bridging this gap by either assigning all tort liability to humans or circumventing tort law altogether. These approaches either subvert tort law’s primary goals, require significant structural change, or offer only a piecemeal solution to the problem. The control framework laid out in this Article provides a functional and comprehensive solution for governing injuries caused by the Autonomous AI Physician that both balances the benefits and risks of technological innovation in healthcare and advances tort law’s compensation and deterrence goals. [read full article]
LAWFARE FOR THE FUTURE by Braden Leach
Russia and China seek to alter the international status quo. While aiming to avoid full-fledged war with other great powers, they will take all measures short of war to increase their spheres of influence. This will include exploiting the United States’ strategic vulnerabilities, especially in the new frontiers of space and cyber. International law currently plays little role in these realms. While the United States is actively developing its own space and cyber capabilities, there has been no analysis of the role that lawfare—the use of international law to further geopolitical goals—can play in its strategy. This Article takes up that question and offers a few conclusions.
First, as it is not in the United States’ interest to ban anti-satellite weapons, it should continue to push against efforts to ban them. Second, as the issue of space sovereignty looms, the United States should preempt accusations of land grabs, choose whether to label other states’ occupations as such, and weigh whether to exit or revise the senescent Outer Space Treaty. Third, the United States should strongly consider promoting an international agreement that bans certain types of cyber activities such as election interference and power grid hacking. This would strike a balance between its current approach of pure competition and the creation of overly stringent international rules. Regardless of the paths it chooses, the United States must develop a coherent lawfare strategy. [read full article]