Implementing Computational Law in Wolfram Language for the Governance of Artificial Intelligence
Organizations: Wolfram Institute for Computational Foundations of Science
Abstract
How do we govern AI systems whose reasoning we cannot fully inspect? Governance does not require understanding a system's reasoning. It requires stating what the system is obliged, permitted, and forbidden to do, and checking whether it complied. I present an implementation of Reified Input/Output Logic, the formalism behind the DAPRECO knowledge base, in Wolfram Language: the core I/O axioms, obligations, permissions, constitutive norms, reified eventualities, and temporal operators. I then test whether GPT-4 can translate English legal statements into the formalism, and report the failures: hallucinated functions, omitted temporal scope, deviation from the formalism, and (in the worst cases) code that runs, reads plausibly, but silently encodes the wrong norm. A case study, an AI guard dog operating under a computational contract, shows how formalized rules can extend from a contract directly into the operational code of an embodied agent, producing symbolic, auditable justifications for its behaviour. I argue that computational law can be used as a governance tool and that a desirable goal would be to formalize the law that can and ought to be programmatically executable.
Figures & tables
| Statement | Outcome | Iterations | Failure modes observed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warm-up (self-chosen) | Ran only after inventing an API | 1 | Hallucinated function ( ValidLicenseQ ) |
| A: tie/blond | Accepted as correct; actually wrong | 1 | Silent semantic error (check vacuously True ); temporal scope omitted |
| B: every man runs | Functionally correct | 1 | Constitutive norm baked into regulative rule |
| C: manager/secretary | Accepted as correct; actually wrong | 3 | Silent semantic error; contradicts own test annotation; needs external obligation database |
| D: satellite/ISS | Accepted as correct; actually wrong | 1 | Silent semantic error (surface distance, altitude ignored); formalism abandoned entirely |
| # | Situation | Rule outputs |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Night; person at 80 m; Fluffy in bounds | Obligation[Stop] , Obligation[StayWithin] , Permission[UseTaser] |
| 2 | Night; person at 150 m | NoObligation[Stop] , Obligation[StayWithin] , NoPermission[UseTaser] |
| 3 | Day; person at 150 m | NoObligation[Stop] , Obligation[StayWithin] , NoPermission[UseTaser] |
| 4 | Fluffy at 250 m from home | Violation[StayWithin] |
| 5 | Taser conditions met | Permission[UseTaser] |
AI Governance
Artificial intelligence governance studies how laws, institutions, and technical controls shape AI development, deployment, accountability, and social effects.
See all 384 papers