ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES: RETHINKING LEGAL SUBJECTIVITY IN THE DIGITAL ERA

Abstract

This article offers an expanded legal-theoretical and comparative examination of the status of artificial intelligence (AI) systems and autonomous vehicles (AVs) under contemporary law. Building on prior work in cyber law and civil-law theory, it argues that neither full personhood nor the classical object-of-property paradigm is, on its own, adequate to govern the conduct of increasingly autonomous machines. Instead, the article proposes a layered framework in which (i) AVs remain objects of property subject to a special legal regime grounded in product liability, strict liability, and mandatory insurance, and (ii) a narrowly tailored, functional construct of “electronic person” operates exclusively as a liability-channeling device for high-risk autonomous systems, anchored by a compulsory compensation fund. The article surveys the legal responses of the European Union (including the 2024 AI Act and the revised Product Liability Directive), the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the People’s Republic of China, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, identifying convergent design principles. It then maps these principles onto the existing legal framework of the Republic of Uzbekistan — in particular the Civil Code, the Laws “On Road Traffic Safety,” “On Automobile Transport,” “On Personal Data,” “On Electronic Document Circulation,” and “On Insurance Activities,” together with the 2024 Strategy on AI Development — and proposes concrete legislative, regulatory and institutional reforms. Methodologically, the study combines comparative-legal analysis, historical-evolutionary tracing of legal personality, doctrinal analysis of civil liability, and a risk-allocation model drawn from law-and-economics scholarship.