About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


25 Jrslm. Rev. Legal Stud. 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/jerusrls25 and id is 1 raw text is: Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2022), pp. 1-17 https://doi.org/10.1093/jrls/jlacOO2 The Law of Al: A Renegotiation or a Reproduction Commentary on Ryan Abbott, The Reasonable Robot Omri Rachum-Twaig* & Ohad Somecht I. Introduction Ryan Abbott's The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Intelligence and the Law offers a functional approach to the law of Artificial Intelligence (AI) robots. Soon, if not already, AIs will compete with human employees in a variety of tasks and fields-from manufacturing and transportation to programming and medi- cine-prompting the fourth industrial revolution.1 But Abbott does not find this to be as alarming as it may appear. Instead, while the transition period requires some state intervention, he argues, [h]istory has shown [that] fears [of techno- logical unemployment] were misplaced, at least in regard to concerns about long-term unemployment (p. 5). What Abbott is concerned with is that competition between AIs and humans would be on equal footings. This concern is highlighted in the main theme of the book, the principle of AI legal neutrality asserting that the law should not dis- criminate between Al and human behavior (p. 3). Al legal neutrality does not advocate for AI's having legal rights or legal personhood (p. 4). AIs are not arti- ficial people and society should not advance their autonomy, freedom, or * Omri Rachum-Twaig, Research Fellow, Federmann Cyber Security Research Center, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Adjunct Professor, Buchmann Faculty of Law and Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University, Israel. t Ohad Somech, Post-Doctoral Fellow, the Law Data Lab, Bar-Ilan University; Research Fellow, Zefat Academic College; Research Fellow, Federmann Cyber Security Research Center, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. 1 One may wonder why now is the time to address Al? After all, the idea that AI will, at any moment, become common in society has existed for some time now without actually manifesting. It is often difficult to identify a technological revolution at its outset, and though we do not address this issue here, one may consider two possible explanations for the timing of the book. One is the actual (or perceived) existence of technological advances of revo- lutionary potential, such as in the context of automated vehicles. In the previous several years automakers have argued they are on the verge of large-scale introduction of autonomous vehicles, with some already operational, as in the not-very-successful example of the Tokyo Olympics. A second reason, not to be dismissed, is the ever- increasing interest in Al in both legal literature and practice, including the EU regulatory framework and the estab- lishment of a dedicated law journal. © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com