With all this talk about "AI", where does Tort law fit in?

Christopher Robertson (Boston University) has published a very good short piece in The Hill explaining how Tort Law is, and will continue to be, relevant as "AI" becomes more prevalent and may (or may not) lead to injuries.   The article is called "A simple solution to regulate AI" and you can find it here.

Here is the gist:

[Executives from the leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies] . . . may be genuinely concerned about the profound dangers of AI. But as a law professor, I have seen this dynamic before, and I worry that these executives may write laws that actually leave us less safe. . . . 

. . .  I am reminded of the industrial-age transition from horses to trains and then automobiles, a revolution that also changed the way the law manages risk at an industrial scale. . . . 

. . . Courts developed a flexible set of laws that require everyone who creates risks to take reasonable precautions to protect against foreseeable harms. . . . 

. . . . 

The beauty of negligence law is its flexibility; it puts the onus on companies to recognize those risks and to fix them, long before anyone is injured. In contrast, given the almost limitless number of ways that AI could cause harm, I worry that legislators or regulators will be slow and unimaginative.

. . . .  

Read the full article here.