Filed under mass-torts
Every brief tagged "mass-torts".
- § 01 · AI-AGENTS
Fault for Services, Strict Liability Only for Machines: Wang Liming on Tort Liability When AI Agents Cause Harm
In Tsinghua University Law Journal (《清华法学》) 2026 No. 5, Wang Liming (王利明) of Renmin University sets out how Chinese tort law should handle harm done by AI agents. His answers: an agent is never a liable party, so liability falls on the people along its value chain; AI that provides a service, such as generative AI, is judged by fault, while strict product liability applies only to agents that enter the physical world as tangible things and threaten life, body, health or tangible property; where fault applies, operators and deployers should prove they took reasonable care; multiple actors are not jointly and severally liable by default, but answer in proportion to their causal contribution, with the party closest to the end user carrying the heaviest risk-control duty; open-source and free providers get lighter treatment; causation should be presumed when the evidence sits with the defendant; and the 'mass micro-torts' agents produce, such as leaks of many people's personal information, call for representative and public-interest litigation rather than individual suits. DCC summarizes the article section by section and maps each proposal against the Supreme People's Court's AI Disputes Opinions (法发〔2026〕10号), the PIPL and the Civil Code. Most of Wang's framework is already in the Opinions; the reversal of the burden of proof for service agents, the presumption of causation, and substitute measures for data-subject rights go further.