{"id":57042,"date":"2026-06-12T11:02:46","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T15:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine\/?p=57042"},"modified":"2026-06-15T14:12:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T18:12:05","slug":"can-ai-conform-to-social-norms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine\/current\/intelligence\/can-ai-conform-to-social-norms\/","title":{"rendered":"Can AI Conform to Social Norms?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/faculty\/gillian-hadfield\/\">Gillian Hadfield<\/a>, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of AI Alignment and Governance, we\u2019re not ready for the AI transformation that\u2019s coming. \u201cGetting AI governance right is crucial, because we\u2019re about to integrate these systems into our societies\u2014the ultimate test of large-scale human cooperation,\u201d Hadfield says. \u201cWe\u2019re not looking to the future and asking what governance structures, legal frameworks, and institutions we need to first establish,\u201d she warns. \u201cWe\u2019re heading toward a world with millions of AI agents participating with essentially zero legal infrastructure to manage their participation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s more than just following societal rules; it requires a deeper understanding of what value those rules have in society.\u201d \u2014 Gillian Hadfield<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>A member of JHU\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/ai.jhu.edu\/\">Data Science and AI Institute<\/a>, Hadfield was hired in 2025 as part of a new cluster of BDPs whose research weaves data science, data-driven research, and AI even more fully into the fabric and future of the university. With expertise in technology, law, and institutional economics, her work focuses on ensuring that artificial intelligence follows the ethical norms that allow human societies to thrive. Hadfield approaches the AI alignment problem from both technical and policy perspectives. She is concerned with developing AI systems that can understand and conform to human normative institutions, as well as with establishing the legal and regulatory structures needed to guide AI. Underpinning her work are human normative systems, including social norms, informal dispute resolution, and formal systems of law, which she explains are the fundamental infrastructure of human groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hadfield builds computational models of these systems to ultimately enable AI systems that align with human normative institutions and reasoning. \u201cIt\u2019s more than just following societal rules; it requires a deeper understanding of what value those rules have in society,\u201d she says. Her work challenges conventional thinking about how legal rules are made and enforced, and she has become a leading voice in the call to redesign legal infrastructure to serve a globalized and digitally transformed society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2014 JAIMIE PATTERSON<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent in everyday life, Professor Gillian Hadfield is helping build the legal and ethical infrastructure needed for an AI-driven future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":57393,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[],"issue":[105],"class_list":["post-57042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-intelligence","issue-spring-2026"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Can AI Conform to Social Norms? 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