Lucy McCormick invited to join the UKJT sub-committee on AI and Civil Liability

The Master of the Rolls, Sir Geoffrey Vos, has delivered a speech setting out upcoming plans for the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce (“UKJT”).

The UKJT is chaired by Sir Geoffrey Vos and brings together the judiciary, the Law Commission of England and Wales, regulators, and legal professionals. Its objective is to provide market confidence and a degree of legal certainty to promote the choice of English law in the context of emerging technologies.

Already, the UKJT has published three Legal Statements aimed at clarifying the law in nascent areas. First, in 2019, was a statement that smart contracts are capable of being legally binding contracts and that cryptoassets are property. Later, the UKJT published two further statements, one on the issuance and transfer of digital securities, and the other on the application of insolvency law to digital assets.

Sir Geoffrey has announced that the task force has new projects on the horizon, including on Liability for harms caused by AI. He said: “I have thought for some time that the sector was in need of reassurance as to the ability of English law to provide redress for harms caused by AI. The UKJT will produce a fourth legal statement on this topic, also with an eye to whether or not statutory intervention or underpinning is required. The focus will be on harms caused to third parties and whether the existing law of torts can adequately respond.” The Master of the Rolls emphasised the need for the UK to keep pace with other jurisdictions in this arena, referring in particular to the European Commission’s proposed AI Liability Directive. He said that in his view the strongest justification is that “there is genuine market uncertainty about how and when developers of AI tools and those that utilise them might incur legal liability when things go wrong. Market uncertainty has been the backdrop to each of the three existing legal statements and provides a strong rationale for embarking on this new legal statement on civil liability for harms caused by AI.”

Henderson Chambers’ Lucy McCormick has been invited to join the UKJT sub-committee on AI and Civil Liability.

The full speech may be found here.

To subscribe to Henderson Chambers news, alerters and updates please click here.