VU Law Faculty continues its leadership in the development of interdisciplinary approach to the fields of law and technology sciences – this week was held the international conference “Human centric AI: ethics, regulation, and safety”, which brought together Lithuanian and European experts whose research focuses on the development and regulation of law, data and technology, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). During the two-day conference on 16-17 October, they presented the latest insights into the application of AI in law, medicine and other fields, the risks and regulatory options.
Challenges of AI needs to be considered from different perspectives
On the second day of the event, the participants were welcomed by the Dean of the Law Faculty, Assoc. Prof. Dr Haroldas Šinkūnas, who stressed that it is important to talk about the issue of AI from different perspectives, which can only be done by bringing together experts from different fields. The Law Faculty has been pursuing this vision for several years now, as such a large interdisciplinary conference on “The Digital Asset Revolution: Opportunities and Challenges” was already organised last autumn, said Assoc. Prof. Dr Vigita Vėbraitė, Vice-Dean for studies of the Faculty, who welcomed the audience on the first day of the event.
Will human skills remain important in the age of AI?
Can the AI take over the job of a judge? Will the AI become a competitor to the judge? This was the questions posed by Prof. Habil. Dr Kinga Flaga-Gieruszynska and Dr Aleksandra Klich, legal scholars at the University of Szczecin, Poland, who gave the keynote speech on the first day. According to the experts, an AI cannot replace a real judge, but can be his assistant. The understanding and application of human decision-making, as well as of morals and ethics, is important in judicial decision-making, and it is difficult to program such an understanding. Another aspect is public confidence in justice, which is unlikely to be higher if the decisions are taken by the AI, according to Prof. habil. Dr. K. Flaga-Gieruszynska and Dr. A. Klich.
AI can also bring changes to healthcare. Dr Jan van Staalduinen, a specialist in private law at Leiden University in the Netherlands, gave a presentation on the role of the AI in medicine. He presented systems that can help to diagnose a patient. Such technology would change the liability for a patient’s treatment – the doctor would no longer be legally liable for a wrong diagnosis.
Ethics and human dignity as value foundations for the development of AI technologies
Ai security is more highly valued than ethical and broader societal concerns, notes Dr Hubert Etienne, who came from the Science Po University and researches computing philosophy and AI ethics. He has also noticed another feature of AI that needs to be improved, namely the representation of minorities in the images generated by AI. Of course, such a goal makes one wonder how to represent the diversity of society. Dr H. Etienne argues that more data should be collected, but, as he points out, this choice leads to privacy problems.
Dr Sue Anne Teo, who came from the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Sweden, addressed the issue of human dignity in the context of AI. She argues that dignity and vulnerability are interlinked and that it is therefore necessary to first define human dignity and then decide how to regulate AI.
Cyber threats and the future of technology
Identifying potential cyber threats is one of the method to use AI, according to Dr Rosalili Wan Rosli, professor at the Bradford University in United Kingdom, who argues that AI can do this task more effectively.
Data can be used as a weapon, and the professor notes that states are now looking to ensure data security. Data classification is a possible solution to strengthen data protection in cyber warfare. “Data should be classified according to risk levels,” said Prof. Dr R.W. Rosli.
One of the presentations at the conference highlighted the near-future prospects opened up by quantum computing. Roman Bieda and Anna Bednarek, from the AI Law Tech Foundation (Poland), presented the vast possibilities of such computers. As quantum computers use different algorithms and have superior technical characteristics to conventional computers, they can work very fast and cover many different positions. Such computers could be used in the future in the fields of finance, medicine and logistics. Of course, as the speakers pointed out, combining quantum computing and AI poses much higher risks. R. Bieda and A. Bednarek believe that in the future, governments will support the development of these computers.
Noting the growing importance of interdisciplinary cooperation and knowledge sharing among specialists in various fields, the VU Law Faculty plans to continue organising conferences in the future, which will provide opportunities for experts to exchange the latest scientific insights and, thus, to develop the science of law in tandem with the development of technology.
Records of this conference presentations are uploaded on the VU Law Faculty’s Youtube platform.
