This chapter explores the reasonable person’s encounter with entities that possess artificial intelligence (AI). A discussion of this encounter is particularly important, since it has been argued that the advent of AI will lead to the demise of the reasonable person. The first section focuses on the ability of the reasonable person standard to assess the behaviour of machines or algorithms that act on behalf of humans and lack autonomous decision-making capacities. The second section considers proposals to replace the reasonable person standard with a reasonable robot or reasonable AI standard. The section also asks to what extent the reasonable person standard can be used to assess the behaviour of autonomous digital agents that act autonomously. The third section discusses contemporary proposals to subjectivise law through big data, in a manner that would dispense with the need for a reasonable person standard, since everyone would be measured with reference to their own personal standard.

AI has the potential to be substantially safer than people. Self-driving cars will cause accidents, but they will cause fewer accidents than people. Because automation will result in substantial safety benefits, tort law should encourage its adoption as a means of accident prevention. Under current laws, suppliers of AI tortfeasors are strictly responsible for their harms. A better system would hold them liable for harms caused by AI tortfeasors in negligence. Not only would this encourage the use of AI after it exceeds human performance, but also the liability test would focus on activity rather than design, which would be simpler to administer. More importantly, just as AI activity should be discouraged when it is less safe than a person, human activity should be discouraged when it is less safe than an AI. Once AI is safer than a person and automation is practicable, human tortfeasors should be held to the standard of AI behavior.