The Phantom Agent: Artificial Intentionality and Legal Responsibility – Stanford Centre for Legal Infomatics

‘Artificial intelligence systems increasingly generate conduct that appears intentional. They negotiate, advise, adapt to obstacles, and shape human decision-making. Yet they are not legal persons and lack minds in any conventional sense. This Article argues that the apparent impasse dissolves once legal intent is understood functionally rather than metaphysically. Across contract, tort, corporate, and criminal law, intent has never been a simple report on inner mental states. It is a normative tool used to gate legal effect, allocate blame, and manage risk, one that is routinely inferred, imputed, and even fictionalized in service of institutional goals. The Article reframes the AI question accordingly. Instead of treating AI systems as candidate legal subjects, it sees them as non-personal agents whose conduct is attributable to identifiable human principals through doctrines of agency, respondeat superior, electronic-agent contracting, and corporate attribution that already do this work.’

Link: https://law.stanford.edu/publications/the-phantom-agent-artificial-intentionality-and-legal-responsibility/