Algorithmic A-Legality: Shorting the Human Future through AI

Abstract

This article provides a necessary corrective to the belief that current legal and political concepts and institutions are capable of holding to account the power of new AI technologies. Drawing on jurisprudential analysis, it argues that while the current development of AI is dependent on the combination of economic and legal power, the technological forms that result increasingly exceed the capacity of even the most rigorous legal and political regimes. A situation of "a-legality" is emerging whereby the potential of AI to produce harms cannot be restrained by conventional legal or political institutions.