Governing AI R&D: A Legal Framework for Constraining Dangerous AI
This work addresses the need for lawmakers to implement AI regulation that avoids legal invalidation, focusing on public safety concerns.
The paper tackles the problem of legal challenges to AI regulation by analyzing three classes of litigation risk in the U.S., including the First Amendment, administrative law, and the Fourteenth Amendment, and provides guidance for lawmakers to preemptively address these risks to enable effective AI governance.
As AI advances, governing its development may become paramount to public safety. Lawmakers may seek to restrict the development and release of AI models or of AI research itself. These governance actions could trigger legal challenges that invalidate the actions, so lawmakers should consider these challenges ahead of time. We investigate three classes of potential litigation risk for AI regulation in the U.S.: the First Amendment, administrative law, and the Fourteenth Amendment. We discuss existing precedent that is likely to apply to AI, which legal challenges are likely to arise, and how lawmakers might preemptively address them. Effective AI regulation is possible, but it requires careful implementation to avoid these legal challenges.