Liability for Harms Caused by Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (360G-Wellcome-213613_Z_18_Z)

How will legal liability be assigned when an AI system causes harm? Does the law need reform? In a report published earlier this year, the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence identified these as crucial questions for on-going innovation in the AI sector. We will explore these questions in the healthcare context, providing an analysis of the liability landscape for harms caused by the use of machine learning algorithms in clinical care. Our analysis will focus on three different types of liability frameworks that might apply—negligence, product liability, and sui generis legislation—each of which raises legal and normative questions that have received insufficient attention. This research project will have three core outputs: (1) a summary report explaining the legal landscape and policy-relevant findings for a multidisciplinary audience; (2) a substantial piece of legal scholarship analyzing the contours of the landscape and the potential ways in which the law might be reformed to serve different policy goals; (3) a grant proposal for a multi-year research programme to examine in more detail some of the under-theorized legal and normative questions identified by this project.