ABSTRACT
Artificial intelligence (‘AI’) is becoming integral to modern life, fueling innovation while presenting complex legal challenges. Unlike traditional software, AI operates with a degree of autonomy, producing outcomes that its developers or deployers cannot fully anticipate. Advances in underlying technology have further enhanced this autonomy, giving rise to AI agents: systems capable of interacting with their environment independently, often with minimal or no human oversight. As AI decision-making – like that of humans – is inherently imperfect, its increasing deployment inevitably results in instances of harm, prompting the critical question of whether developers and deployers should be held liable as a matter of tort law.
This question is frequently answered in the negative. Many scholars, adopting a framework of technological exceptionalism, assume AI to be uniquely disruptive. Citing the lack of transparency and unpredictability of AI models, they contend that AI challenges conventional notions of causality, rendering existing liability regimes inadequate …
Herbosch, Maarten, Liability for AI Agents (April 28, 2025), North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology, volume 26, no 3, pp 391-458 (2025).
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