The Ironies of Automation Law: Tying Policy Knots with Fair Automation Practices Principles

The article provides a broad description of automation that allows many overlapping technologies to be discussed simultaneously and an expansive overview of automation design. The article then makes three novel contributions to an already novel subject area. The first contribution is a reflection on legal approaches to automation in the U.S. – the article identifies an existing and ill-conceived approach to governing automation that focuses on the capabilities of the day’s automation. The second contribution is a legal approach to emerging technologies that recognizes the complex relationship between man and machine – policy knots. Using the policy knot approach, the article includes a preliminary series of Fair Automation Practices Principles based on existing automation design principles, missing guidance, and recently identified issues.