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AI Standard of Care
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What Is 'Standard of Care' and Why Does It Matter for AI?

·2 mins
Fundamentals Standard of Care Negligence Liability Basics
Table of Contents

The Foundation of Professional Liability
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Before we can understand AI standard of care, we must understand what “standard of care” means in traditional professional liability.

The Basic Framework
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In negligence law, professionals owe a duty to exercise the care that a reasonably competent member of their profession would exercise under similar circumstances. This is the “standard of care.”

When a professional fails to meet this standard and that failure causes harm, they may be liable for negligence or malpractice.

How Standards Are Established
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Courts determine the applicable standard of care through:

  1. Expert testimony - Other professionals testify about what a competent practitioner would do
  2. Professional guidelines - Standards published by professional organizations
  3. Regulatory requirements - Government mandates that establish minimum expectations
  4. Industry custom - Common practices in the field

The AI Complication
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AI disrupts this framework in several ways:

The Novelty Problem
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When a practice is new, there may be no established custom or guidelines. Courts must reason by analogy or from first principles.

The Expertise Gap
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Who is qualified to testify about what “reasonable” AI governance looks like? Computer scientists? Domain experts? AI ethicists? Courts are grappling with this question.

The Black Box Problem
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Traditional standard of care analysis assumes the professional understands their tools. But AI systems may be opaque even to their operators.

The Speed of Change
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Standards of care typically evolve slowly. AI capabilities change rapidly. What was reasonable last year may be negligent today.

The Key Questions
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For any AI system in professional practice, we must ask:

  1. What duty did the professional owe?
  2. What would a reasonably competent professional have done regarding AI use?
  3. Did the professional’s AI-related conduct fall below that standard?
  4. Did that failure cause the harm complained of?

These questions are being litigated across every field where AI is deployed. The answers will shape practice for decades to come.

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