Download seminar artificial intelligence: challenges for law, regulation and policy

SEMINAR
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: CHALLENGES
FOR LAW, REGULATION AND POLICY
DR. PHILIP HANKE AND RORICK TOVAR,
INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC LAW, UNIVERSITY OF BERN
SPRING TERM 2017
BACKGROUND
The role of autonomous systems using artificial intelligence (AI) and the change they bring upon society is
a topic of increasing relevance. For example, car manufacturer Tesla plans to demonstrate a fully
autonomous, self-driven trip from New York to Los Angeles by the end of 2017. Already five years ago,
IBM’s Watson computer system competed on the popular TV-show Jeopardy! against two former winners
and won. In more recent news it was reported that Watson took up a job at a hospital and was able to
suggest treatment plans that matched suggestions from oncologists in 99 percent of the cases and
recommended treatment routes that doctors missed in 30 percent of cases. Other systems were able to
predict the outcomes of court cases. In a computer science course taught at the Georgia Institute of
Technology, it was revealed that one of the teaching assistants, Jill, who answered student questions and
requests electronically, was actually a computer. While AI still seems like science-fiction, it is gradually
becoming part of our lives, with Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana being two examples from day-to-day
life.
While automatization is advancing quickly, there are no indications that the technological frontier is near
to creating actual intelligence in the sense of a sentient consciousness anytime soon. While artificial
narrow intelligence (ANI), designed to perform very specific tasks easily outperforms humans (e.g. email
spam filters, self-driving cars, internet search engines), artificial general intelligence (AGI), which
effectively emulates a human brain, has so far only reached an intelligence level somewhere between
insects and mice. However, if Moore’s law remains valid (computing power doubles every 18 months), the
computational power of a human brain can be reached in the 2020s. With appropriate software
development, AI will make the step from being as smart as the average human to being smarter than the
smartest human very quickly.
Many legal, regulatory, and policy questions arise from these developments. Who should be liable in the
case of an accident with a self-driving car? Who should pay the insurance premiums for that car? Should
autonomous systems be allowed to share personal data of its users, and to what extent? Who should hold
the patent to inventions made by AI? What laws should robots have to follow?
In the context of the legal profession, AI has been discussed in the field of online dispute resolution, the
discovery process in litigation, in the context of contract design and review, and others. Will computers
ever replace judges and lawyers? Question of responsibility and liability will have to be solved.
This seminar will approach these questions from a variety of disciplines and approaches.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
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Participants can identify the legal, regulatory, and policy challenges created by recent and future
developments in the field of artificial intelligence.
They critically reflected on the implications of these findings for a variety of actors (e.g. lawyers,
judges, parties in litigation) and society in general.
They understand contemporary legal and regulatory approaches to artificial intelligence.
Participants also improved their academic and professional skills, such as:
o Conducting legal research, retrieving information from a range of data sources and
including interpretation of textual and numerical data
o Interpreting a set of facts in order to identify legal issues arising, providing reasoned
arguments and conclusions
o Constructing a coherent argument in response to oral or written stimuli, and presenting
it in front of colleagues
o Reflecting on one’s own learning, responding appropriately to formative testing and
feedback
TARGET AUDIENCE
Advanced students of law or social sciences (BA, MA, Major and Minor, LLM, Erasmus, etc.).
TENTATIVE DATES (TO BE CONFIRMED)
Thursday, 13-16.00 on the following dates: 23.2., 9.3., 23.3., 6.4., 4.5., 18.5., 1.6.
(contingent on the number of participants)
Attendance is mandatory for all meetings. Location: TBD
ASSESSMENT
Active participation by all participants is essential to this seminar. Small tasks (such as reading
assignments) will be given during the semester. Participants are asked to give a presentation (and
circulate a handout of at most two pages beforehand), and to write a seminar paper on a topic of their
choice.
The course language is English.
To register (or for any inquiries), please send an email to [email protected] before January 8,
2017. Participation is limited to 20 students.