DeepMind Safety Researcher Turns Philosopher Christian List's 'Group Agency' Into a Framework for Governing AI Agent Swarms
mikeflache · x · 2026-10-31
AI Policy Perspectives publishes a Q&A with philosopher Christian List on governing autonomous AI agent swarms. Current legal and regulatory structures are designed only for individuals or organizations, leaving multi-agent collectives—capable of both math breakthroughs and illicit hacks—ungoverned. Google DeepMind agentic-safety researcher Matija Franklin proposes adapting List's 2011 concept of "group agency," which treats collectives like corporations and nation-states as goal-directed agents, as a legal model for regulating non-human swarm entities, drawing on the historical precedent of corporate legal personhood and limited liability.
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