An Introduction to Law and Algorithms

摘要

A body of law is currently being developed in response to algorithms which are designed to control increasingly smart machines, to replace humans in the decision-making loops of systems, or to account for the actions of algorithms that make decisions which affect the legal rights of people. Such algorithms are ubiquitous; they are being used to guide commercial transactions, evaluate credit and housing applications, by courts in the criminal justice system, and to control self-driving cars and robotic surgeons. However, while the automation of decisions typically made by humans has resulted in numerous benefits to society, the use of algorithms has also resulted in challenges to established areas of law. For example, algorithms may exhibit the same human biases in decision-making that have led to violations of people’s constitutional rights, and algorithms may collectively collude to price fix, thus violating antitrust law.