It is encouraging to see more serious attempts to regulate AI.

Delaware’s proposed AI-company sandbox is one such effort. It would create a new legal entity that can be directed by an AI agent, enter into contracts, own property and be sued - while generally shielding its human or corporate 'owner' from its debts.

But I find myself wondering whether this starts in the middle of the story.

Before we create new legal wrappers for autonomous systems, have we established the foundational rules: who is ultimately accountable for an AI’s decisions, acts or omissions; what duties apply to its creators and deployers; and what transparency, auditability and redress must exist when harm occurs?

The proposal may create a mechanism for AI vendors and deploying organisations to minimise legal exposure and gain regulatory clarity. That is understandable. But it also risks putting liability architecture ahead of accountability architecture.

Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act of 1996 is a relevant analogy. Its protections enabled social-media networks, forums and online marketplaces to operate at scale without the constant threat of lawsuits over user-generated content. That was a powerful enabler of the modern internet.

Yet its application has also been criticised for reducing the incentive to build stronger safeguards. Today, platforms face claims and lawsuits alleging user harm from addictive design, misinformation and algorithmic amplification.

The point is not that Section 230 caused every failure of the social internet. It is that legal protections, once embedded, can be remarkably difficult for governments to recalibrate when their unintended consequences emerge.

We should be careful not to repeat that pattern with AI - where the downside is not simply harmful content, but potentially autonomous commercial decisions made at machine speed and scale.

The goal should not be to make AI impossible to deploy. It should be to ensure innovation carries responsibility with it. As French philosopher Paul Virilio observed, “when you invent the plane, you also invent the plane crash.” We cannot allow responsibility to become the one thing every participant is enabled to avoid.

The question is not whether AI agents will act in the economy. They will.

The question is: when they do harm, who is accountable - and does the answer remain meaningful in practice?

#AI #AIGovernance #ResponsibleAI #Leadership #CorporateGovernance

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