Delivering the keynote speech to the 2025 UK Lawtech Conference last week, Sir Geoffrey, who chairs the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce (UKJT), said the taskforce will be starting work ‘immediately’ on its next three projects.
First, it will produce non-binding guidance on the concept of ‘control’ regarding digital assets. Second, it will provide a statement on redress for harms caused by AI—the taskforce has already issued three statements on the status of cryptoassets and smart contracts and the use of blockchain systems.
Sir Geoffrey said the fourth statement will be produced ‘with an eye to whether or not statutory intervention or underpinning is required.
‘The focus will be on harms caused to third parties and whether the existing law of torts can adequately respond’. He said the UKJT thinks there is ‘genuine market uncertainty’ about how and when developers of AI tools and those that use them might incur legal liability when things go wrong. Given the ‘multiple calls in the UK’ for more AI regulation and ‘for legislation to create new liabilities for its use. It would obviously be useful for government to have a reliable legal backdrop against which to consider those calls’.
The third project is to form an International Jurisdiction Taskforce (IJT), bringing together ‘legal thinkers in the digital space from the main private law jurisdictions around the world’. Sir Geoffrey said the idea ‘is to start the process of seeing whether some level of private law alignment can be achieved between the laws applicable in the most commonly chosen commercial jurisdictions. New York law, English law, Singapore law, Dubai law and French and German law might be a suitable starting point’.
