Artificial cosmoi and the law

A conference organised by the UCL Centre for Law, Economics & Society (CLES), IMEDIPA and the European Public Law Organisation (EPLO)

Convened by

Professor Ioannis Lianos,
Director, Centre for Law, Economics and Society, UCL 

with
Dr. George Dimitropoulos
HBKU Law

With the kind sponsorship of

This conference will foster lively debate between scholars from various disciplines and practitioners on the interaction between Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, robots, virtual reality and algorithmic decision-making – the ‘artificial cosmoi’, and the legal system.

The recently published ‘One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence’ identifies a number of areas of human activity that are and will likely be affected by AI in the near future.[1] But the law is conspicuously slow in adapting to the needs of society and in particular to the development of new technologies. Law usually reacts to societal changes, but it, moreover, usually has a restricting function: it prohibits rather than enables certain types of activities. Both features of law make it a rather poor instrument to deal with the cataclysmic changes that the rapid developments in the technologies of Artificial Intelligence will be bringing about in the not too distant future. These will touch upon all aspects of social life, from issues of employment and intellectual creation, or more generally the creation of resources, to new modes of data and AI-driven governance, and will affect multiple environments reaching from the streets and hospitals to the battlefield. If it is for the law to remain relevant, it will have to rapidly adapt to these challenges so as not to move from the epicenter to the periphery of social activity. A possible, mostly reactive, approach will be to design legal rules mitigating the risks arising from the recourse to Artificial Intelligence and the development of artificial cosmoi, but also to take advantage of algorithms and AI in achieving the objectives of the law. The Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament recently proposed the establishment of a European Agency for robotics and artificial intelligence in order to supply public authorities with technical, ethical and regulatory expertise, and the setting of common European Union rules to be adopted on a voluntary basis to regulate issues of liability for the social, environmental and human health impacts of robotics in order to ensure that they operate in accordance with legal, safety and ethical standards – eventually by also considering the creation of a specific legal status for robots as ‘electronic persons’;[2] this illustrates the increasing interest of legislators and regulators in the various societal, legal and ethical risks raised by AI and associated technologies. However, beyond this reactive approach, how should legal epistemology be re-conceived so as to fully engage with the ‘structuration’ of the emerging ‘artificial cosmoi’?

[1] Peter Stone et al..  ‘Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030’. One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence: Report of the 2015-2016 Study Panel, Stanford University, Stanford, CA,  September 2016, available at: http://ai100.stanford.edu/2016-report.

[2] Study available at: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML%2BCOMPARL%2BPE-582.443%2B01%2BDOC%2BPDF%2BV0//EN

The Programme

8.45: Registrations

9.00: Welcome:
Prof. Ioannis Lianos, Director of the Centre for Law, Economics & Society, UCL Law, Chairman, IMEDIPA & Chief Researcher, HSE

9.10 – 10.50 Panel 1:
Accountable Artificial Intelligence and Robotics: Ethical and Legal Challenges

Chairman and commentator:
Alexis Arvanitis, University of Crete

Sylvie Delacroix, UCL Law and UCL Computer Science
For Better, for Worse… Setting the Terms of our Partnership with AI

Mihalis Kritikos, Policy Analyst, European Parliament
European Parliament Report on Civil Law Rules on Robotics: Setting the Ground for a European Perspective on Robot Law?

Sandra Wachter, Oxford Internet Institute & The Alan Turing Institute
Transparent, Explainable, and Accountable AI for Robotics

Commentator:
Theodore Kostantakopoulos, Senior Associate Ballas, Pelecanos & Associates Law Firm

10.50 – 11.10 Coffee break

11.10 – 12.15 Panel 2:
Artificial Intelligence, Privacy and the Data-Driven Economy

Chairman and commentator:
Prof. Ioannis Lianos, Director of the Centre for Law, Economics & Society, UCL Law, Chairman, IMEDIPA & Chief Researcher, HSE

Kostantina Bania, European Broadcasting Union
The Role of Consumer Data, Machine Learning and Data Protection in the Enforcement of EU Competition Law

Maksim Bashkatov, HSE
Robo-Advising as a Challenge for Classical Legal Dogmatics

George Flouris, Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FO.R.T.H.)- Institute of Computer Science (I.C.S.)
Challenges in a Highly Interconnected Digital World: the Cases of Privacy and Digital Bias

12.15- 13.00 Panel 3:
Robot Wars: Implications of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics on International Law

Chairman and commentator:
Antonios Tzanakopoulos, University of Oxford- Faculty of Law

Lucas V.M. Bento, Senior Associate, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan
No Mere Deodands: Human Responsibilities in the Use of Violent Intelligent Systems under Public International Law

Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi, European University Institute
The Intensification of the Challenges Posed to the Jus in Bello by Drone Programs

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch break

14.00 – 14.30 Keynote Speech

Nicholas Ashford, Director of the Technology & Law Program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Transformation of the Industrial State: Technology Advances, Economic and Financial Structural Changes, and Employment Concerns

14.30 – 16:30 Panel discussion:
The Social Implications of Artificial Cosmoi: Are we Ready? – What Can the Legal System or Regulation do About it?

Chairman and commentator:
Sotirios Georganas, City University

Georgios Dimitropoulos, HBKU Law
Artificial Intelligence, Human Behavior and the Law: Behavioral Standards as Process Standards for AI

Clinton William Francis, HBKU Law & Northwestern Law School
Enterprise Governance in a Digital World: A Post-Legal Epistemology

David Singh Grewal, Yale Law School
Legal Regulation of Synthetic Biology

Ioannis Lianos, Director of the Centre for Law, Economics & Society, UCL Law, Chairman, IMEDIPA & Chief Researcher, HSE
Artificial Intelligence, Algorithmic Regulation and the Welfare State

Nicolas Petit, University of Liege
Law-Making and Law-Enforcement with AI: First and Second Order Challenges

16.30 – 17.00 Coffee Break

17.00 – 18.30 Panel 4:
The impact of Artificial Intelligence and Robots on the legal process

Chairman and commentator:
Georgios Dimitropoulos, HBKU Law

Alexandre da Silva & Marina Feferbaum, FGV Law School
Impact of Machine Learning Technologies on the Legal Practice of Repetitive Litigation

Deni Mantzari, Reading University Law School
The Scope and Limits of Algorithmic Adjudication in the Administrative State

Dimitrios Tsarapatsanis, School of Law, University of Sheffield
Predicting Judicial Decisions of the European Court of Human Rights: A Natural Language Processing Perspective

Ioannis-Evangelos Papasliotis, UCL
Robots for Law Enforcement and Security Purposes Deployed in an Urban Environment

18.45 End of the conference