Patch Tuesday for the Law: Hunting Legal Zero‑Days in AI Governance
TL;DR: Legal zero‑days are previously unnoticed faults in how laws interlock. When triggered, they can invalidate decisions, stall regulators, or nullify safeguards immediately—no lawsuit required. A new evaluation finds current AI models only occasionally detect such flaws, but the capability is measurable and likely to grow. Leaders should treat statutory integrity like cybersecurity: threat model, red‑team, patch. What’s a “legal zero‑day”? Think of a software zero‑day, but in law. It’s not a vague “loophole,” nor normal jurisprudential drift. It’s a precise, latent defect in how definitions, scope clauses, or cross‑references interact such that real‑world effects fire at once when someone notices—e.g., eligibility rules void an officeholder, or a definitional tweak quietly de‑scopes entire compliance obligations. ...