Code-Driven Law NO, Normware SI!

2024-10-05

arXiv.org

AI Summary

Contemporary research on the “code–law–AI” relationship in the digital age lacks foundational mechanistic accounts, remaining constrained by a binary paradigm that treats code and law as separate domains. Method: This paper introduces “normware”—a novel abstraction layer—through interdisciplinary integration of conceptual modeling, legal philosophy, AI ethics, and systems design, alongside normative abstraction analysis. Contribution/Results: We formally define normware for the first time and establish its theoretical framework, illustrated with canonical examples. Normware transcends conventional technical governance models by enabling systematic representation of legal norms within computational artifacts. It provides a more foundational modeling perspective and design ontology for AI governance, socio-technical embedding of smart contracts, and compliance-aware system design. By re-conceptualizing socio-technical systems not merely as tool-adaptive but as institutionally coordinated, normware advances the theoretical and practical foundations of responsible AI and regulatory technology.

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: AI & Law, Justice, Regulation & Governance
• Humans and AI: Human-Aware Planning and Behavior Prediction
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Agent Architectures

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Technology governance, policy, and regulations
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Applied ML and AI for Web-based mobile applications
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems

Abstract

With the digitalization of society, the interest, the debates and the research efforts concerning"code","law","artificial intelligence", and their various relationships, have been widely increasing. Yet, most arguments primarily focus on contemporary computational methods and artifacts (inferential models constructed via machine-learning methods, rule-based systems, smart contracts), rather than attempting to identify more fundamental mechanisms. Aiming to go beyond this conceptual limitation, this paper introduces and elaborates on"normware"as an explicit additional stance -- complementary to software and hardware -- for the interpretation and the design of artificial devices. By means of a few examples, I will argue that a normware-centred perspective provides a more adequate abstraction to study and design interactions between computational systems and human institutions, and may help with the design and development of technical interventions within wider socio-technical views.

Problem

• code-law-AI relationship
• digitalization
• normware

Innovation

• normware
• socio-technical contexts
• abstraction for interactions