AI in PI: Artificial Intelligence in Personal Injury, including Mass Torts AI

Authors have posed the question for several years, Who Is Liable When AI Kills? | Scientific American. We have an answer in one case from California.

As published in Fortune in November 2023, “Jurors in state court in Riverside, California, on Tuesday sided with Tesla in the first lawsuit blaming a fatality on Autopilot to go to trial. The two surviving passengers who were seriously injured sought $400 million in damages for physical injury, mental anguish and loss of the driver’s life.” Per this article, the plaintiffs’ attorneys argued the Autopilot software chose to swerve off the road. They presented this as a manufacturing defect.

This may not be the best test case for how AI will fare in PI lawsuits. Here, the driver operated the vehicle after consuming alcohol. Thus, the jurors may have accepted Tesla’s lawyers’ arguments that human error, not a defect, caused the crash.