FOR 5906:  The Legal and Social Consequences of Artificial Decision Making

• Subject Area: Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 548899139

Human decision-making, actions, and designs are increasingly being supported, supplemented, or replaced by machine decision-making. Machine decision-making often occurs through "artificial intelligence" systems (AI systems), which have significantly improved in recent years—particularly due to the immense increase in computing power and the ability to supply computer systems with large amounts of data. The rise of machine decision-making signifies a turning point for law and society. On one hand, machine decision-making offers chances such as efficiency, economic prosperity, or qualitatively better decision outcomes. On the other hand, it can curtail freedoms, cause significant harm, and lead to losses in legitimacy. Against this backdrop, there exists a wealth of legal literature on the legal implications of machine decision-making. However, there is a research gap concerning the significance of machine decision-making for the fundamental functions of law in modern societies and the role of legal science. Both aspects have been addressed from specific perspectives but have not yet been systematically studied. For example, cross-disciplinary concepts of responsibility and control are essential, as they necessitate legal attribution systems in varying forms and emphases and seek to realize justice postulates. The research group aims to identify the challenges and potentials of machine decision-making for the functions of law in modern societies, develop legal design options, and redefine the role of legal science under the auspices of machine decision-making. The group focuses on selected issues from various legal fields (legal philosophy, legal linguistics, private law, corporate law, civil procedure law, labor and social law, criminal procedure law, data protection law, criminology) that have encountered new challenges due to machine decision-making. The research group analyzes connected research questions and demonstrates through contextual and comparative analysis similarities and differences in the relevant regulatory structures, among other things, to create a foundation for the efficient realization of legal policy objectives. The group identifies overarching problems through constant exchange and collaboration and develops generally applicable solutions. This would not be possible through isolated work in individual projects. The group closely cooperates beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. The group unites projects with doctrinal and foundational focuses under a common goal of insight.

• DFG Programme: Research Units

Projects

• Artificial Decision-Making and Anthropocentric Principles of (Private) Law (Applicants Arnold, Stefan ;  Kirchhefer-Lauber, Anna )
• Capabilities and Limitations of Social Control through Data Science Systems (FOR 5906) (Applicants Boers, Klaus ;  Grimme, Christian ;  Kemme, Stefanie ;  Singelnstein, Tobias )
• Chances and limitations of machine-based decision-making in criminal proceedings (Applicants Heghmanns, Michael ;  Hertel, Guido ;  Zimmermann, Frank )
• Coordination Funds (Applicant Arnold, Stefan )
• Corporate law between anthropocentrism and self-driving corporation - how much AI can a company tolerate? (Applicant Casper, Matthias )
• Protection against discrimination as a limit to machine decision-making (Applicant Malorny, Friederike )
• Use of Artificial Intelligence in Civil Proceedings (Subproject 5) (Applicants Göhsl, Jan-Frederick ;  Heiderhoff, Bettina ;  Hippel, Svenja ;  Rüsing, Christian )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Stefan Arnold