Back to (for) the future: AI and the dualism of persona and res in Roman law

Abstract

The development of AI brings many contemporary challenges which force law to face its roots. Legal relationships are materializing that takeus to Roman law –to when these relationships were not about machines and their masters, but about masters and slaves. Today’s search for accountability of the AI remains within the confines of the duality of persona and res, with its modern conception limited in comparison to the Roman law of slavery and its relation to dominica potestas, a key concept for the organization of Roman society. Our objective is not to identify what historical remedies might help us “solve” AI’s problems,but to examine how new developments impose the need to become reacquainted with the classical origins of law. Law and technology were already intertwined since antiquity and its concerns resurface as the core of our answers to contemporary philosophico-legal questions.