Call for Papers: Cambridge Forum on AI: Law and Governance on issue- Governing Agentic AI, Deadline: 15 October 2026
Cambridge Forum on AI: Law and Governance publishes content focused on the governance of artificial intelligence (AI) from law, rules, and regulation through to ethical behaviour, accountability and responsible practice. It also looks at the impact on society of such governance along with how AI can be used responsibly to benefit the legal, corporate and other sectors.
Following the emergence of generative AI and broader general purpose AI models, there is a pressing need to clarify the role of governance, to consider the mechanisms for oversight and regulation of AI, and to discuss the interrelationships and shifting tensions between the legal and regulatory landscape, ethical implications and evolving technologies. Cambridge Forum on AI: Law and Governance uses themed issues to bring together voices from law, business, applied ethics, computer science and many other disciplines to explore the social, ethical and legal impact of AI, data science, and robotics and the governance frameworks they require.
Cambridge Forum on AI: Law and Governance is part of the Cambridge Forum journal series, which progresses cross-disciplinary conversations on issues of global importance.
The journal invites submissions for the upcoming Themed Issue: Governing Agentic AI, Guest Edited by Prof. Tobias Mahler, Prof. Malcolm Langford, Prof. Henrique Sousa Antunes, Prof. Ana Paiva, Prof. Arlindo Oliveira, Prof. Emily Weitzenboeck, and Prof. Luis Barreto Xavier.
The deadline for submissions is 15 October 2026.
About the Themed Issue
The rise of agentic AI systems – with their ability to make independent decisions and plan and execute complex tasks with minimal human intervention – raises urgent questions over how they should be effectively governed. Agentic AI holds the promise of reducing manual and repetitive tasks, improving cybersecurity through greater adaptivity, and enabling users to develop and access more professional services in different sectors through real-time management of complex questions. However, agentic AI also raises serious concerns over control and accountability, including prompt injection, data poisoning, unexpected (i.e., emergent) behavior, bias amplification, accuracy, uncertainty quantification, explainability, liability attribution, and sustainability – in addition to potential broader negative socioeconomic impacts such as job displacement.
This interdisciplinary themed issue explores the potential governance consequences of the agentic AI turn. Governance is understood as the mechanisms, processes, and institutions for the making and enforcement of decisions, including regulation, use of incentives, and technical solutions. A recurring challenge is the Collingridge Dilemma: knowledge of the effects of agentic AI may mature only after the window for effective control over its development has narrowed, making early and anticipatory governance design both necessary and difficult. We invite papers from the fields of law, social science, ethics, computer science, engineering, public policy, and STS that grapple with the governance questions surrounding agentic AI.
Key Questions
Submissions may address questions including, but not limited to:
- What are the potential scenarios for agentic AI development and what key governance concerns does it raise?
- What are the central dilemmas in governing agentic AI?
- To what extent do and can existing governance systems ensure effective agentic AI governance, now and in the future?
- Can technical solutions alleviate agentic AI governance risks? Can effective governance be integrated in agentic AI systems, or must they be scaffolded around them?
- How can the risks of emergent behavior by agentic AI systems be effectively future-proofed in governance given high levels of uncertainty over their nature, severity, and likelihood?
- Should governance reforms weight ex ante or ex post controls?
- What types of governance reforms are necessary to address agentic AI, generally or in specific domains or governance regimes?
- How can governance regimes address agentic interoperability across cross-border, especially in an era of regionally-distinct LLMs?
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