Does compliance with the global anticorruption regime require the use of artificial intelligence?: The case of managing global critical raw material value chains

Hybrid event

Business firms constantly hear that artificial intelligence has changed the world and that they must either utilize artificial intelligence or fall behind. By extension, this would be true of regulatory compliance as well as operations. This article challenges the mantra of artificial intelligence as a ubiquitous agent of change. It does so through the lens of the global anticorruption regime, a transnational web of laws, regulations and norms that work together to reign in corruption. As this article demonstrates, the global anticorruption regime imposes on business firms a requirement to implement effective and up-to-date antibribery programs.

Given the prevailing conception of artificial intelligence as the newly-critical tool for business, it would be easy to interpret “effective” and “up-to-date” as requiring the use of artificial intelligence. To determine whether in fact the global anticorruption regime does, this article undertakes two analyses. First, it carefully determines the systems requirements of the type of artificial intelligence most applicable to antibribery programs – systems that can distinguish between honest and corrupt actors and transactions – and determines the regulatory constraints on the use of artificial intelligence in that way. This article then asks specifically what tasks artificial intelligence would be asked to do as part of an antibribery program, and evaluates the capacity of artificial intelligence to perform those tasks given the already determined system requirements and constraints. These analyses yield a surprising conclusion: in some instances the use of artificial intelligence would be helpful, but for most business firms, particularly for smaller firms or firms that have not experienced bribery, the use of artificial intelligence would not be helpful and could be harmful. Regulators and legal scholars must not think of artificial intelligence as a panacea; its potential use must be analyzed in the context of objectives and the capacities, needs, and limits of artificial intelligence.

About the speaker

Dr. Philip M. Nichols is the Joseph S. Kolodny Professor of Social Responsibility in Business and Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He was Co-Chair, UN/CEFACT Law Group (United Nations experts committee on electronic commerce and trade facilitation), 1998 to 2005.

Moderator: Professor Hans Hendrischke, Sydney Business School.

Tue 21 January 2025

Time: 1-2pm

Venue: Boardroom, Level 4, New Law Building, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney, Camperdown campus

CPD Points: 1

This event is jointly sponsored by the Sydney Centre for Asian and Pacific Law and the Sydney Netzero Institute.

It is part of the first meeting of the UN/CEFACT working group on the white paper of ‘Addressing Conflict of Laws and Facilitating Digital Product Passports in the Critical Raw Material Value Chains’.

Does compliance with the global anticorruption regime require the use of AI