Professor Burkhard Schafer the University of Edinburgh School of Law has published ZombAIs: Legal Expert Systems as Representatives “Beyond the Grave”, 7 SCRIPTed 384-393 (2010) (Issue No. 2). Here is a summary:
This paper will explore if the “artificial brains” software developed in AI research could become the next generation of tools to exercise control “beyond the grave” and create identify maintaining cues in the way Unruh described which is similar to the “personal backup” popularised in the novels of the Scottish writer Iain Banks. It will argue that such an approach could revitalise previously abandoned themes in legal AI research. In the first part, we develop an analysis of the methodological challenges encountered by legal AI research in developing systems that can autonomously interpret legal norms. In the second part we describe a new application, the use of expert systems in inheritance law, which can use the positive insights that were gained in the early days of research into legal AI, while avoiding the systemic methodological problems earlier, more ambitious projects had encountered.
