AI in law and ethics

The integration of AI in nearly every aspect of our lives brings forth numerous legal challenges that need careful consideration. Some of the key legal issues include discrimination and bias, black box problem, intellectual property, privacy, and security issues.

As legal regulation cannot follow the fast paste of technological development, many questions remain unclear, creating legal uncertainty and unpredictability.

The research group on AI, Law and Ethics is involved in several projects.

Project Human reading assessment aims to identify how we can develop a HUMAN digital reading assessment that presents students with engaging texts and tasks adapted to their interests and level of reading skill. There are significant human rights concerns associated with the use of systems that gather large amounts of personal data about students (Berendt et al., 2020). To uphold children’s rights in digital environments, their rights and particular needs should be considered at every stage from design to implementation. It is therefore necessary to examine how human rights risks are reflected in legal framework and how they might be addressed by designers. It is also necessary to look to property law for some issues raised by the project: who owns the data produced by the children? Who owns the assessment, the texts, the algorithms?

Another project looks into use of AI in the health sector. Some of the key legal challenges include regulatory compliance, as AI-driven medical devices and software must comply with regulatory standards set forth by regulatory bodies worldwide. Ensuring compliance with evolving regulations is critical to safeguarding patient safety. Data privacy and security are also significant concerns. AI systems rely heavily on vast amounts of patient data, including sensitive medical records and personal information. Compliance with data privacy laws such the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU is essential to protect patient privacy and prevent data breaches.

Determining liability and accountability in cases of AI-related errors or malfunctions presents another significant legal challenge. Establishing clear lines of responsibility between healthcare providers, designers (AI developers), and regulatory authorities is crucial to ensure accountability and mitigate legal risks.

Informed consent is another crucial aspect. Patients must be adequately informed about the use of AI technologies in their diagnosis and treatment. Ensuring transparency and obtaining informed consent from patients regarding AI-driven interventions and decisions is essential to uphold medical ethics and legal standards.

The group also explores the use of AI technologies on legal research, such as its impact on the field of comparative law.  AI makes it possible to sift through massive amounts of legal texts, cases, and statutes from multiple countries to quickly uncover parallels and differences between legal systems. In this regard, it can contribute to uncovering the best practices and de lege ferenda solutions to different legal issues in national legal orders, as well as contribute to harmonization and unification efforts in various areas of law. It might also develop an AI -based smart legal system that is in constant process of reforming itself.

The aim of this research is to explore the potential of AI in advancing comparative legal research, as well as possible limitations and caveats of using this tool for comparisons. This will be done in context of legal cultural model, which will form a backbone for analysis. The research will try to answer the question to what extent AI will change the nature of comparative research.

Research group will also focus its research on AI and non- discrimination, in particular the right to explanation in context of the right to non-discrimination. We aim to explain the relationship between the right to explanation and non-discrimination as a fundamental right, as well as look into how this right should be balanced with the trade secrets and the need to support innovation. Other legal issues, such as personality rights protection and AI, AI and data ownership, as well as copyrights and other IP rights and their relationship with AI are also of interest of the research group. The group also aims to address ethical questions and implementation challenges in various sectors ranging from healthcare and education to finance and energy.