16 - Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI

Summary

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of many digital technologies currently under development.¹ In recent years, it is having increasing repercussions in the field of law. These repercussions go beyond the traditional effect of an economic and industrial evolution. Indeed, the epochal industrial transformations and paradigmatic shifts it generates in many sectors have, from a legal perspective, a structural impact on legal rules and on legal practice. Moreover, the speed of these transformations also impacts on the regulatory response that a legislator is able to provide. In point of fact, rather than running the risk of new legislation rapidly becoming obsolete, regulators around the world have preferred so far to take their time to observe the changes unfolding in current technologies, and to assess their impacts from the legal point of view, before proposing any specific courses of action. Although legal experts, contrary to ethicists, have traditionally shown little interest in AI, algorithms, machine learning and so forth, it is now virtually impossible for them to ignore the impact of AI on the law, and more specifically, the question of whether actual legal rules and regulations can cope with the changes taking place in the economy and in the society, on one hand, and whether the use of AI tools in legal practice is compatible with the founding principles of our legal orders, on the other hand. If new rules are needed, lawyers will have to define their content and how to make sure they are suitable for the long term, in a context of rapidly changing technologies.