Robustness and Overcoming Brittleness of AI-Enabled Legal
Micro-Directives: The Role of Autonomous Levels of AI Legal Reasoning
Lance Eliot
arXiv2020
20
eliot2020robustness
Abstract
Recent research by legal scholars suggests that the law might inevitably be
transformed into legal micro-directives consisting of legal rules that are
derived from legal standards or that are otherwise produced automatically or
via the consequent derivations of legal goals and then propagated via
automation for everyday use as readily accessible lawful directives throughout
society. This paper examines and extends the legal micro-directives theories in
three crucial respects: (1) By indicating that legal micro-directives are
likely to be AI-enabled and evolve over time in scope and velocity across the
autonomous levels of AI Legal Reasoning, (2) By exploring the trade-offs
between legal standards and legal rules as the imprinters of the
micro-directives, and (3) By illuminating a set of brittleness exposures that
can undermine legal micro-directives and proffering potential mitigating
remedies to seek greater robustness in the instantiation and promulgation of
such AI-powered lawful directives.