Claim LD01-SL-C11 (v1.0)
Kolt notes that the US Restatement (Third) of Agency holds that a computer program “is not capable of acting as a principal or an agent as defined by the common law” and that “at present, computer programs are instrumentalities” of their users, and he uses agency law and principal–agent economics to analyse AI agents’ problems of information asymmetry, discretionary authority and loyalty.
Provenance and status
- Claim type
- FACT + INTERPRETATION (as printed: “FACT + INTERPRETATION”)
- Publication status
- ELIGIBLE (LEGAL_SCOPE) (as printed: “ELIGIBLE WITH LEGAL-SCOPE QUALIFIER”)
- Verification state
- CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY (PREPRINT) (as printed: “CONTENT VERIFIED PREPRINT”; verified by: UNKNOWN)
- Does not license
- A claim that AI systems have intentions, or a statement of current law outside the US Restatement
- Source (field 6, as printed)
- Kolt, “Governing AI Agents,” arXiv:2501.07913, 2025 (forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review)
- Source type (field 7)
- PREPRINT (as printed: “Preprint (law review article, forthcoming)”)
- Institutional position
- Independent academic (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
- Maturity (claim evidence / publication maturity)
- EMERGING (as printed: “EMERGING”)
- Recorded date
- 2026-10-16
- Currentness / correction
- This is the current version. No correction or concern relation is recorded on its Sources.
Version
Pinned version v1.0 (entry LD01-SL-C11--v1.0) — this page never floats to newer evidence.
This pinned version is also the current version.
Pinned Sources (field 6, version-specific)
- “Kolt, “Governing AI Agents,” arXiv:2501.07913, 2025 (forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review)” → SRC-SL-KOLT-GOVERNING-AI-AGENTS-ARXIV-2501-07913--v1.0 — Kolt, “Governing AI Agents,” arXiv:2501.07913, 2025 (forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review); class PREPRINT (explicit public provenance pin)
All 25 canonical Claim fields (raw values and normalized values)
| # | Canonical field | Canonical value (verbatim) | Normalized (Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CLAIM ID | LD01-SL-C11 | — |
| 2 | PUBLIC-FACING CLAIM | Kolt notes that the US Restatement (Third) of Agency holds that a computer program “is not capable of acting as a principal or an agent as defined by the common law” and that “at present, computer programs are instrumentalities” of their users, and he uses agency law and principal–agent economics to analyse AI agents’ problems of information asymmetry, discretionary authority and loyalty. | — |
| 3 | CLAIM TYPE | FACT + INTERPRETATION | base_types: FACT, INTERPRETATION |
| 4 | RESEARCH STRAND | A — What each account says generative AI is, and what it predicts | — |
| 5 | MATURITY | EMERGING | states: EMERGING |
| 6 | SOURCE | Kolt, “Governing AI Agents,” arXiv:2501.07913, 2025 (forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review) | source_ids: SRC-SL-KOLT-GOVERNING-AI-AGENTS-ARXIV-2501-07913 |
| 7 | SOURCE TYPE | Preprint (law review article, forthcoming) | classes: PREPRINT |
| 8 | INSTITUTIONAL POSITION | Independent academic (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) | — |
| 9 | SCOPE | US common law of agency; AI systems that plan and execute tasks with limited human involvement | — |
| 10 | DESIGN | Legal and economic analysis | — |
| 11 | SAMPLE / DATASET | Not applicable | — |
| 12 | MODEL / TOOL / VERSION | AI agents in general; the paper cites developers’ agent products as motivation | — |
| 13 | COMPARATOR | Human agents under agency law | — |
| 14 | MAIN RESULT | In US common law a program is an instrumentality, not an agent; the author treats the agent framing as a governance lens and proposes inclusivity, visibility and liability as safeguards | — |
| 15 | INFERENTIAL TARGET | How law classifies AI agents, and what the agent framing implies for governance | — |
| 16 | DOES NOT LICENSE | A claim that AI systems have intentions, or a statement of current law outside the US Restatement | — |
| 17 | VERIFICATION STATE | CONTENT VERIFIED PREPRINT | state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY · qualifiers: PREPRINT · verified_by: UNKNOWN |
| 18 | LIMITATIONS | Read in the arXiv PDF dated 11 February 2025 (the version number is not stated in the file); the published law-review version was not compared; the Restatement wording is quoted by the author and was not checked against the Restatement itself | — |
| 19 | CONTRADICTORY / SUPPORTING SOURCES | The EU’s legal category for models: LD01-SL-C36 | — |
| 20 | GEOGRAPHY / LANGUAGE | US / English | — |
| 21 | DISTRIBUTIONAL LEDGER | Not analysed in this claim | — |
| 22 | R01 / FIELD-MAP LINKS | LD-01, T4, D6 | — |
| 23 | WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS CLAIM? | Courts or a revised Restatement treating an AI system as an agent in law | — |
| 24 | PUBLICATION STATUS | ELIGIBLE WITH LEGAL-SCOPE QUALIFIER | state: ELIGIBLE · qualifiers: LEGAL_SCOPE |
| 25 | RECORDED DATE | 2026-10-16 | — |
Field 22 references resolved against Field Map v0.2: LD-01 (LIVING_DEBATE); T4 (TENSION); D6 (DOMAIN)
Cited by Living Debate versions
Research-of-record provenance
Materialized by sociolens-materializer 0.6.0 at 2026-09-28T20:00:00.000Z; normalization contract SocioLens — Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2 — Pre-Spike Materialization Contract (v1.0.2). Content seal SHA-256 b36573c3ba731c37de7818d606bd5a5fa051217359c55a0f20bf171c67ad86ae.
Repository-authored inputs (not Drive exports)
- SocioLens claim — LD01-SL-C11 v1.0 (v1.0) — written in the SocioLens repository by Project Lead (Claude, AI) on 2026-10-16; no Drive identity exists. Authority: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 16 October 2026 to build the LD-01 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-01 source notes, checked against full texts, official web pages or official abstracts. Block “ENTRY 11 — LD01-SL-C11” SHA-256
b8d5f8884b7c4f43364b363d96deb7a8a6347647586d1ee06bfc9b75c1cb3b0c; fixturefixtures/authored/claims/LD01-SL-C11--v1.0.
Builder decisions (not Drive data)
- VERSION = v1.0 — basis: Claim version taken from the repository-authored claim fixture version (SocioLens claim — LD01-SL-C11 v1.0); the first version of a new Claim of the LD-01 debate
- CURRENT_POINTER = true — basis: repository-authored claim "SocioLens claim — LD01-SL-C11 v1.0" (Project Lead (Claude, AI), 2026-10-16); basis: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 16 October 2026 to build the LD-01 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-01 source notes, checked against full texts, official web pages or official abstracts
- FIELD_6_SOURCE_REFERENCE = SRC-SL-KOLT-GOVERNING-AI-AGENTS-ARXIV-2501-07913--v1.0 — basis: field 6 of ENTRY 11 — LD01-SL-C11 cites "Kolt, “Governing AI Agents,” arXiv:2501.07913, 2025 (forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review)"; the only field-6 segment of this ClaimVersion's repository-authored ledger block.
- SOURCE_PROVENANCE_PIN = SRC-SL-KOLT-GOVERNING-AI-AGENTS-ARXIV-2501-07913--v1.0 — basis: explicit version-pinned public provenance of this ClaimVersion (Amendment v1.2 §6): the pinned field-6 Source record "Kolt, “Governing AI Agents,” arXiv:2501.07913, 2025 (forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review)".