The Dilemma of Making Laws in the AI Era

Making laws in the AI era is a great challenge for policy makers and legislators of today’s era. New technology has creatively destroyed traditional legal systems, leading to the need for new rules and behaviors. With the focus on developing the perception, cognition, and decision-making ability of computers, AI is reshaping the global social and industrial structure, posing a major challenge to decision makers in education, finance, labor, and other fields. ODAILY.INFO provides insight and analysis on the impact of AI on society and the challenges of reforming the legal framework to regulate its influence.

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The dilemma in making laws in the AI era

New technology creatively destroys by breaking a series of traditional legal systems, which requires new rules and new behaviors. This leads to a dilemma in making law, that is, how to design a tight or flexible legal system to deal with emerging social relations and legal problems.

The storm of technological breakthrough

From the second half of the 18th century, when the steam engine of james watt started to be used in many industries, it “wiped out” the handicraft textile industry and opened the way for industrial production, and the first industrial revolution appeared. This cycle of creation, destruction and reconstruction was also repeated in the second industrial revolution in 1908, when Henry Ford started the mass production line of Model T cars, making the giant carriages a thing of the past, and the labor structure, industry and car replacement services became common. Similarly, the third industrial revolution used electronic equipment and information technology, and manufacturing automation continued to impact the gold of traditional communications, media and manufacturing. The face of the market and society has also changed rapidly with technological innovation.

Now, the focus of the fourth industrial revolution is to develop the perception, cognition and decision-making ability of computers, as well as the micro-operation ability like human beings. This further reduces the role and even eliminates the need for human beings to exist in some production processes, destroying and reshaping the global social and industrial structure. The conflict between the past and the future of these inventions, like the industrial revolution carefully described by Schumpeter with the theory of “creative destruction”, is testing us.

The new point of this destruction is not only the initial far-reaching changes brought about by the inventions of the first and second industrial revolutions. Christensen believes that this “disruptive technology” may start from a small crack in market share, and then expand to the dominant position in the world like the ongoing third and fourth revolutions. For example, smart phones have “eliminated” at least ten other devices, such as traditional mobile phones, MP3 players, digital cameras, tape recorders and phone book support, by integrating a series of modern functions to meet the multi-functional needs of consumers. Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data are breakthrough technical fields, which have produced profound personal transformation at multiple levels. Digital transformation poses a major challenge to decision makers in education, finance, labor and other fields.

Cats drawn by AI are mistaken for Ningshun cats, and the copyright of works drawn by AI is still a controversial topic.
It is very important to reform the legal framework for solving social relations related to breakthrough technologies. However, it is not easy to design an adequate legal framework to regulate the influence of technology, balance social interests, promote trade and ensure access to breakthrough technologies. This is a great challenge to the policy makers and legislators of today’s era, just like solving multiple problems in a ruby block at the same time.

Creative destruction of the laws:

Breakthrough technology not only brings creative destruction to the economic and social structure, but also to the legal system. First of all, the formation and popularization of new technologies will be faster and faster. The creative destruction wave of the first industrial revolution lasted for about 110 years, the second time in about 50 years, the third time in 30 years, and the fourth time in 25 years. Therefore, if the life span of human beings is 100 years, then we may suffer such damage four or five times in our life. Material goods and services may be digitized, leading to large-scale destruction of the concepts and definitions of the world as we know it. This has brought many great challenges to maintaining a stable legal system, but it is still the development of society.

To put it simply, virtualization came into being from video games around 1980, and became more active in the online game market in 2000. Zynga became the first virtual commodity company to be listed on the American stock exchange in 2010, but now the United States and the European Union have just started a cooperation project to formulate regulations and legal principles to regulate digital economic transactions. In terms of international trade law, the drafters of the 1980 Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, to which Viet Nam is a member, interpreted the traditional concept of goods as transferable items for more than 40 years. The recent discussion about changing the method is still going on.

Even if laws are updated and concepts and principles are added to adjust according to actual needs, ensuring the sustained vitality of the law is not an easy task for legislators until the technological lifecycle becomes shorter and easier to replace. Imagine a legal text that only lasted for a few years, until technology and recognized concepts no longer became popular in practice. This has also caused equal trouble as aging laws and regulations attempt to survive and gradually become marginalized by social unrest.

Secondly, as the constantly changing technology and market environment become increasingly diverse and complex, the nature of legal issues arises. The legal framework for intellectual property, e-commerce, telecommunications, and internet privacy gradually took shape during the Third Industrial Revolution. This demonstrates the broader impact of legal relationships on the evolution of technology during this period. However, the legal issues that emerged during the Fourth Industrial Revolution forced legislators to reconsider legal theory or legislative techniques in order to solve problems in a new context.

Discussion for privacy protection

Technology companies use algorithms to collect and analyze user data, such as Clearview AI analyzing facial images on social media, which has sparked discussions and privacy protection.
In terms of selecting appropriate legislative techniques, specifically, national and international laws currently do not recognize artificial intelligence as a legal entity. Artificial intelligence has no legal status and therefore cannot bear personal responsibility for any damage that occurs. However, with the increasing role of artificial intelligence in society, many people believe that the law needs to be regulated. How to adjust is still a controversial issue. Some people believe that the law does not need to grant the legal status of AI, but only needs to increase the liability for damages outside the contract according to the intentional or unintentional errors (such as the damage caused by autonomous vehicle) made to the relevant personnel of the system. However, some people believe that artificial intelligence requires a separate and comprehensive institution, as the problems are much more complex, especially as the system becomes more autonomous. However, this idea has also been opposed, as strict and strict regulations may inhibit the social benefits innovation of this immature technology.

AI also creatively destroys traditional legal concept. Usually the normative concepts and principles of competition law. Basically, competition law prohibits the abuse of market dominance. In the era of technology, large online platforms control large datasets to give them a competitive advantage, which may lead to data monopolies. However, it is not easy to determine that this company is distorting the market. Previously, the evaluation methods used by regulatory agencies in determining relevant markets, reviewing business history evidence, and transactions were either difficult or proven outdated.

Thirdly, conflicts of interest between stakeholders in the development process, as well as between individual rights and public interests in the application of disruptive technologies, require the establishment of new legal systems. In the 2020 Mutnick v. Clearview AI case, plaintiff David Mutnick claimed that the algorithm behind the Clearview artificial intelligence facial recognition system was trained on a database of 3 million photos from social media and other internet platforms. Although these people are not very familiar with and do not agree with Clearview accessing and using their data. In addition, Clearview has sold the database to over 600 law enforcement agencies and other private organizations. In 2019, Google also faced a class action lawsuit in Dinerstein v. Google, where the plaintiff accused the company of illegally accessing the medical records of hundreds of thousands of patients to “train” diagnostic algorithms and machine learning searches. Seek patents and commercialize paid medical services. These lawsuits also raise a question for legislators, which is to strike a balance between safeguarding human rights, especially privacy, business capabilities, and promoting innovation in technology enterprises, as well as individual rights and public interests.

Fourthly, legislators also need to determine policy and legal consequences from events related to the emergence of new disruptive technologies. Airbnb is a great example. In order to conduct real estate leasing business through the Airbnb application, more and more people are seeking to buy houses in urban communities, which may lead to fluctuations in the real estate market price, speculation and housing shortage in these areas.

Summary:

Therefore, policymakers and legislators need to pay attention to the rights in the digital field on the one hand, and also develop technological and legal frameworks to ensure that everyone’s rights are guaranteed on the other hand. Limit the negative impact in both online and offline environments.

Overall, in the face of the turbulence brought about by breakthrough new technologies, laws and regulations will be to some extent responsive, but the practice that serves as the foundation of the legal framework itself is unstable, unpredictable, and sometimes influenced by ideology. Therefore, legislators and decision-makers did not anticipate all the negative consequences of new technologies for regulatory legislation, and therefore had a cautious mindset, sometimes overestimating the impact of technology rather than actual impact. This mindset will make legislative trends too strict and increasingly isolated, and will not even promote technological development in the market or hinder user accessibility. On the other hand, simply establishing general principles will contribute to the ability of market self-regulation and social restructuring, but leave many legal loopholes that allow entities with better resources and information, such as technology companies, to abuse these resources and information. It has a negative impact on the legitimate interests of all parties involved, and even goes against the public interests that the country needs to protect. This phenomenon is also known as the opposite of technological capitalism.

As technology continues to advance, the need for new laws and regulations becomes even more pressing. Making laws in the AI era requires a balance between regulating the influence of technology, promoting trade, and ensuring access to breakthrough technologies. It is a complex challenge that requires careful consideration and collaboration between policy makers, legislators, and industry experts. ODAILY.INFO provides in-depth coverage on the topic and is your go-to source for the latest insights and analysis.

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