Author Information

He Zehao, Ph.D. Candidate, Renmin University of China Law School

Abstract

AI legislation does not have an inevitable path. The European Union's AI Act adopts a “product safety approach” in its legislative strategy, attempting to respond to the risks of AI through the imitation, application and adjustment of product safety legislation. The significance of the product safety approach is to integrate the market through the process of standardization, to achieve safety deterrence by locking the “Cheapest Cost Avoider”, and to activate the liability system through the public law. However, the non-standardized nature of AI indicates the difficulty of the standardization process, the diversity of AI use cases reveals the complexity of obligation allocation, and the information-costly ex ante standards do not provide an “antidote” to the liability regime. Given the significant differences in market structures and institutional contexts between China and the EU, as well as the limitations of the product safety approach itself, there is no need for China to adopt the product safety approach. Instead, we should take the uncertainty in the field of AI seriously and use the liability system's information production function to provide a factual basis for the next legal action.

Keywords: AI Legislation, EU, Product Safety, Technical Standards