Red Teaming AI Policy: A Taxonomy of Avoision and the EU AI Act

2025-06-02

AI Summary

This study investigates corporate “avoision”—strategic regulatory minimization situated between lawful avoidance and unlawful evasion—in the implementation of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA). It introduces the first three-tiered avoision taxonomy: jurisdictional avoidance, exemption misuse, and regulatory downgrading—systematically exposing institutional arbitrage pathways at both organizational and technical levels. Methodologically, the work integrates legal text analysis, policy impact modeling, and cross-layer strategy mapping to construct an adversarial red-teaming assessment framework tailored to the AIA. Key contributions include: (1) addressing a critical theoretical gap in AI regulatory resilience evaluation; (2) delivering an operational toolkit for detecting regulatory loopholes; and (3) providing forward-looking risk identification and mitigation support for regulators, standards bodies, and AI developers. The framework enables proactive governance by anticipating and countering strategic regulatory circumvention before deployment.

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: AI & Law, Justice, Regulation & Governance
• Humans and AI: AI for Accessibility
• Search and Optimization: Adversarial Search

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems

Abstract

The shape of AI regulation is beginning to emerge, most prominently through the EU AI Act (the"AIA"). By 2027, the AIA will be in full effect, and firms are starting to adjust their behavior in light of this new law. In this paper, we present a framework and taxonomy for reasoning about"avoision"-- conduct that walks the line between legal avoidance and evasion -- that firms might engage in so as to minimize the regulatory burden the AIA poses. We organize these avoision strategies around three"tiers"of increasing AIA exposure that regulated entities face depending on: whether their activities are (1) within scope of the AIA, (2) exempted from provisions of the AIA, or are (3) placed in a category with higher regulatory scrutiny. In each of these tiers and for each strategy, we specify the organizational and technological forms through which avoision may manifest. Our goal is to provide an adversarial framework for"red teaming"the AIA and AI regulation on the horizon.

Problem

• Analyzing firms' strategies to minimize EU AI Act regulatory burden
• Classifying avoision tactics within AIA scope, exemptions, and scrutiny tiers
• Developing adversarial framework to test AI regulation robustness

Innovation

• Framework for analyzing AI regulatory avoision strategies
• Taxonomy of legal avoidance versus evasion in AI
• Red teaming approach to EU AI Act compliance