Agentic Artificial Intelligence: Legal and Ethical Challenges of Autonomous Systems

Objective: to identify specific legal and ethical problems of agentic artificial intelligence and develop recommendations for the creation of protective mechanisms to ensure the responsible functioning of autonomous AI systems.

Methods: the research is conceptual in nature and is based on a systematic analysis of scientific literature on the ethics of artificial intelligence, legal regulation of autonomous systems and social interaction of AI agents. The work uses a comparative analysis of various types of AI systems, a study of the potential risks and benefits of agentic artificial intelligence, as well as an interdisciplinary approach that integrates advances in law, ethics, and computer science to form a comprehensive understanding of the issue.

Results: the research has established that agentic artificial intelligence, possessing the decision-making autonomy and ability to social interaction, creates qualitatively new legal and ethical challenges compared to traditional AI assistants. The main categories of potential harm were identified: direct impact on users through overt and covert actions, manipulative influence on behavior, and cumulative harm from prolonged interaction. The author stipulates the need for distributing responsibility between three key actors: the user, the developer and the owner of the agentic artificial intelligence system.

Scientific novelty: for the first time, the research presents a systematic analysis of the ethical aspects of agentic artificial intelligence as a qualitatively new class of autonomous systems that differ from traditional AI assistants in the degree of independence and social interactivity. The author developed a typology of potential risks of social interaction with agent-based intelligent systems and proposes a conceptual model for the distribution of legal and ethical responsibilities in the user-developer-owner triad.

Practical significance: the research forms the theoretical basis for the development of ethical principles and legal norms governing agentic based artificial intelligence in a growing market for autonomous intelligent systems. The findings will be useful for legislators creating a regulatory framework, developers designing protective mechanisms, as well as organizations implementing agentic artificial intelligence systems in various economic fields.