Epistemic Exploitation and Contributory Injustice in Law and AI Research: Towards a Paradigm Change in Legal Research

摘要

Shaping the development of AI and its capacity to augment human efforts to achieve collective long-term goals (e.g. tackling climate change, sustainable development) is gradually becoming a focal interest of many legal researchers. Scholars have been exploring the potential of using AI to regulate social behaviour, as well as the proliferation of AI in society and the corresponding challenges for the rule of law and fundamental legal principles." While there is a fair amount of variety of opinions within the legal research community as to what should be prioritised in the law and AI agenda, there is less attention being paid to how these priorities should be set, i.e. the epistemological and methodological prerequisites of conducting legal research into AI. In other words, we have not addressed the question: how do our perspectives, disciplinary training and worldviews as legal researchers influence, and potentially limit or bias, our capacity to produce research that will meaningfully impact the future of AI and, through that, the future of humanity?