► Full reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, “The future does not belong to algorithms, but to concepts: in Law as in Mathematics. For example: in Compliance Law”, Newsletter MaFR Law, Compliance, Regulation, 15 September 2026 (linkedin.com/pulse/future-does-belong-algorithms-concepts-law-example-marie-anne-2enee/)
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There is anxiety about the disappearance of mathematicians, faced with an algorithmic power able to solve the classical problems, and therefore about the disappearance of Mathematics in favour of mechanical calculation. Those still at school turn away from learning Mathematics, since the algorithm does their homework for them. The same is observed in the learning of Law, where students and trainees hand in work drafted by AI. Who would not seize the windfall?
Mathematicians are responding by explaining what Mathematics is: not an accumulation of ever more complicated calculations, but inventions. The mathematician invents the universe through the conception he builds of it, waiting for the facts, in a second stage of experiment, to confirm the relevance of his invention. Astrophysics in particular advances in this way. Not that computing power is negligible, but it has always come in support of that human genius which is the power of the Imagination.
In the gloomy times we live in, we no longer credit human beings with their power of invention, asserting that it has somehow been transferred to algorithms. What can be observed of Mathematics can be observed of Law as well — where it is claimed that action has passed from human beings to algorithms, the word “intelligence” blurring the understanding we have of it.
🕴️W. Marx, 🎬« La fabrique de l’intelligence : du mot à la chose », in the colloquium Formes de l’intelligence, Collège de France, 16 October 2025
In Law, let us take the area whose importance no one disputes: “Compliance”. It is a good illustration.
If one thinks that Compliance is the obligation, for a subject entity, to obey every regulation applicable to them, then within that mechanical conception, made of calculations and yet more calculations, algorithms will take charge of it. But because Compliance Law is something else, “conformity” being only one of its tools, what is required is the power to invent and to conceive actions — that is, human capacities, which commit this new branch of Law to human beings once and for all.
I. ALGORITHMS AT THE HEART OF CONFORMITY, TO OBEY EVERY APPLICABLE REGULATION
If Compliance were to be defined not only as “conformity” with regulations, but further as total conformity with them, with the Ex Ante obligation for subject entities to show that they do effectively conform with, then the only solution for those subject entities — mainly undertakings and States — is to transfer the burden to algorithms, in the hope that this “artificial intelligence” will cope with it.
Never mind if the price is the transfer of their data to foreign undertakings which built those tools.
For the “regulatory mass” is such that it cannot be known, by reason of its extent, its complexity and its perpetual change. Only a mechanical memory can do it.
Then, because there is nothing to understand, the algorithm will be able, through its computing power, to spot established non-conformities, then possible, potential, virtual ones, and so to prevent them, and then to dictate conformities.
That is how, in the world of conformity, artificial intelligence is queen.
A.I. is beginning to write the contracts that conform to regulation, then the clauses requiring conformity with regulation from others.
A.I. is beginning to write the pleadings in trials, to obtain or to defend in sanction proceedings, then in proceedings on the performance or non-performance of contracts.
A.I. will soon write the judgments.
A.I. will soon write the statutes. Those with which one will have to be totally in conformity.
One may regret it. Many comments take the form of regret, reproach or lamentation. But legal technique is an instrument. It is deployed to serve goals that the algorithm does not set.
Conforming is not a goal. Compliance Law is far more ambitious than mechanical obedience to every regulation, an ambition that is at once weak and impossible (who, in practice, obeys every regulation that concerns them?).
Compliance Law expresses a concept other than mechanical obedience. Conforming to rules is only one of its means.
II. HUMAN BEINGS, ALONE ABLE TO CONCEIVE THE ACTIONS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE POLITICAL MONUMENTAL GOALS, THE NORMATIVE ANCHORING OF COMPLIANCE LAW
Compliance Law is a new branch of Law, invented so that the systems in which human beings live may be preserved today and tomorrow.
Those systems must be preserved so that human beings may go on living in the medium term (the health system) and in the long term (the climate system), live in society (the banking and financial system, the energy system, the transport system), live in democracy (the digital system), live together (systemic interregulation, so as to avoid war in particular).
From this first concept come the legal principles of Compliance Law: the first principle is the principle of sustainability. Then come effectiveness and supervision.
They apply to every system.
The electrical system must be sound, value chains must work in the long term, the transport system must serve the territory, and so on.
There must be no war tomorrow; alliances must be encouraged, including by the Judge. The Contract is the legal instrument best suited to giving concrete form to Compliance Law, since it can build actions over the long term between the various actors concerned.
The human beings concerned — those involved by force (the climate) or by choice (the internet user, the consumer, and so on) — are the ones who, by their action, can conceive, that is to say invent, the actions through which the Monumental Goals of Compliance take concrete shape.
States and undertakings are bound by the goals, which constitute the legal normativity of Compliance Law, but, in order to contribute each as far as it is concerned to giving them concrete form, they freely implement the means they choose, provided they do so credibly.
That is what must be spoken of, that is what must be taught, that is what must be carried into charters, contracts, judicial decisions and courses, while the algorithms churn the regulatory flow efficiently and blindly — one tool among others of the Revolution of Compliance Law.
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To go further into these questions:
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 🧱“In research, it is not quantity that counts: we have always known it, but the use of AI drives accumulation, just accumulation”, 14 May 2026
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 🧱“The superiority of the Internet system over the algorithmic system, because the first is open and the second is not”, 3 February 2026
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 🎬Overhang series, “From Compliance Law flows the Law of Artificial Intelligence”, 1 October 2024
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 🧱“Compliance and conformity: distinguishing them to articulate them”, Working Paper, February 2024
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 🧱“Compliance, Artificial Intelligence and Business Management: the right measure”, Working Paper, June 2022
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 🧱“Monumental Goals, beating heart of Compliance Law”, Working Paper, August 2021, introduction to the book 📘Compliance Monumental Goals, in the series 📚Compliance & Regulation, JoRC and Bruylant, 2022
🌐All the entries on this theme on mafr.fr, under the tag Artificial intelligence
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