Models of AI Liability
On 3 April 2025 the Obligations Group hosted a lecture on 'Models of AI Liability', presented by Professor Donal Nolan (University of Oxford).
Legal systems around the globe are currently wrestling with the question of liability for harm caused by artificial intelligence (‘AI’) systems. Who should be liable for such harm, and in what circumstances should this liability arise? In this presentation Professor Donal Nolan set out what he sees as being the possible models of AI liability, along with their advantages and disadvantages. Professor Nolan's concern is with personal injury, property damage and economic loss caused by AI systems in circumstances that might give rise to liability in negligence in the common law world, or liability for fault in civilian systems. Other forms of harm caused by AI systems, such as injury to personality interests, lie outside the scope of his analysis.
Photo by Growtika on Unsplash
About the Speaker
Donal Nolan is Professor of Private Law in the University of Oxford and Francis Reynolds and Clarendon Fellow and Tutor in Law at Worcester College, Oxford. He is a Senior Fellow of the University of Melbourne, a founding member of the World Tort Law Society, and an elected member of the American Law Institute. Donal’s research is focused primarily on the law of tort, and in particular the law of negligence, the law of private nuisance and the interface between tort law and public law. He is the author of Questions of Liability: Essays on the Law of Tort (2023); co-author of Contributory Negligence in the Twenty-First Century (2019), Winfield & Jolowicz on Tort, 20th edn (2020), Lunney & Oliphant’s Tort Law: Text and Materials, 7th edn (2023) and Contributory Negligence, 2nd edn (2023); and co-editor of Rights and Private Law (2011), Scholars of Tort Law (2019) and Scholars of Contract Law (2022).