NEW DIMENSIONS OF LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY AND LIABILITY IN THE ERA OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Abstract

In the era of accelerated digitalization, characterized by advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and system automation, traditional legal concepts and principles require urgent adaptation and reinterpretation. Responsibility and legal liability acquire new dimensions: while in classical law liability was closely conected to human will and action, today we often face unprecedented situations in which decisions originate from autonomous systems or opaque algorithms. The attribution of fault and the establishment of liability represent major challenges. Who is responsible when an erroneous decision is generated by an automated system? How can fault be determined if the consequences cannot be associated with a person responsible for them? Can autonomous robots themselves be considered legal subjects? How is liability defined in the case of artificial intelligence generating harmful content?

This study aims to analyze how the era of new technologies compels the law to reconfigure fundamental concepts such as responsibility and liability—concepts increasingly disconnected from human will. As technology evolves at an unprecedented pace and new, complex challenges emerge daily from advanced and autonomous artificial intelligence systems, while the normative framework develops timidly at the European level, it becomes the judge’s particularly difficult task to find solutions to these cases and to act with great caution, given the absence of precedents and the continuously changing evolution.