Generative Artificial Intelligence: A Law and Economics Approach to Optimal Regulation and Governance

This book takes a comparative law and economics approach to explore the role of public and private actors in regulating generative artificial intelligence. The book provides an introduction and context for the creation of new generative AI technologies, now understood to be the chief goal of the leading AI companies. As autonomous ’super-intelligences’, these technologies are still an unknown entity which nevertheless have profound implications for liberal democracy, consumer choice mechanisms, mutual trust, and political legitimacy.

This book explores the deep challenges posed for lawmakers and how we can achieve an optimal form of regulation and governance of such unreliable technologies. Chapters investigate possible hybrid modes of regulation, such as a co-regulatory approach between private AI companies and public actors in addressing the issue of misinformation spread. It also explores mixed types of regulation toward research on new forms of AI, arguing that different levels of systemic risk posed by different technologies must be accounted for. Different contemporary and historical contexts for the regulation of unprecedented technical innovation are also considered, and new suggestions for policy are presented. This book is a timely resource which will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in economic governance, law and regulation, artificial intelligence, and comparative law.

Mitja Kovač is Full time Professor of civil and commercial law at the University of Ljubljana, School of Economics and Business, Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is also a visiting lecturer at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, at University of Ghent, Belgium, at the ISM University of Management and Economics in Vilnius, Lithuania, and at University of Vienna, Austria. He publishes in the fields of comparative contract law and economics, new institutional economics, consumer protection, contract theory and competition law and economics.