Artificial Intelligence and the Law

Abstract

We are surrounded by machines. From simple ones-AC motors and transformers-through radio receivers, TV sets, smartphones and personal computers, to sophisticated AI systems, such as self-driving cars, autonomous weapons and IBM's Watson. The advances in technology have reshaped the world we inhabit, including our social environment. When iPhone is the girl's best friend, our communication and decision-making is aided by complex algorithms, and various tasks so far reserved for human beings are carried out by robots, the contemporary societies are not what they used to be. Moreover, the technology is advancing at such a rapid pace that many ideas, such as companion and sex robots, which used to be a fodder for science fiction are fast becoming a reality. This is a profound challenge for any legal system. The law is there to regulate the actions of individuals so that they contribute to the functioning of large societies. It means that legal institutions should be designed in such a way as to embrace any changes and developments that reshape our communal practices. For this reason, technological progress has been a focus of lawyers' debates since the first industrial revolution. The great discoveries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-car, airplane, radio, TV, computer, the Internet-have not only influenced the existing legal institutions, but have also led to the establishment of entirely new branches of law. Arguably, however, they did not revamp the very foundations of their contemporary legal systems, but served as a means for regulating interactions between human beings.

Legal and ethical implications of applications based on agreement technologies: the case of auction-based road intersections

“…The algorithms used within the computational mechanisms involving auction-based intersections must be effectively audited. The establishment of an Agency for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, in Spain, would be desirable to this respect, following the recommendation of the European Parliament (Walker-Osborn, 2017;Kroll, Huey, Barocas, Felten, Reidenberg, Robinson, and Yu, 2017;Tutt, 2016). This Agency should dedicate itself to the supervision and audit of the algorithms (García Herrero, 2017) to, on the one hand, verify that the algorithms are a faithful translation of the regulations (including respect for human rights and the principle of non-discrimination) and, on the other, this algorithm audit must include the need to protect personal data.…”

Role of Ethics in Artificial Intelligence

“…Judea pearl's (1988) the artificial intelligence systems led to the new acceptance on the decision on reasoning making theory of AI. Work by Judea pearl and by the Eric Horvitz and David Heckerman promoted the idea of the reasoning theory and the systems problem solving 7 .…”