Artificial Intelligence has permeated our lives in an unprecedented way: Driverless Cars are now being tested in the US and the UK, IBM’s ROSS is an algorithmic tool supporting legal practitioners, and virtual personal assistants, such as Apple’s Siri or Microsoft’s Cortana are nowadays widely used. This widespread adoption of AI technologies has given rise to a series of complex legal and ethical considerations.

 

The 1956 Dartmouth workshops are credited to have led to the “birth” of Artificial Intelligence, as they involved scholars from various AI related fields (cybernetics, automata theory, complex information processing) and provided them with a platform to discuss and share ideas. Legal scholars were very much absent from these early discussions on AI. Several decades after the Dartmouth workshops, we are still faced with several questions that require a multidisciplinary approach: The classic question “can machines think” has now evolved into the more complex syllogism of whether machines “can think for us”? To what extent can machines mimic human behaviour, fully undertake mundane tasks or even help us to predict court decisions?

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Our #13AI project consists of a series of podcasts with EU/UK and US based scholars, who have been either deeply involved with the AI industry or have been consulted in AI related policymaking, due to their authority and close engagement with this field. Each interview contributes to the current discussion on the future of AI and the ethical and legal challenges posed for practitioners and businesses. Most importantly, the series intends to build a transatlantic platform for deliberation, bringing together a diverse group of people with a view to deliberate on the legal and ethical challenges posed by the technological advancements in AI.

 

We are privileged to have discussed various aspects of AI with some of the brightest scholars at an international level, coming from various disciplinary backgrounds, such as bioethics, philosophy, sociology, computer science, neuroscience, and law.

 

The series feature scholars based in the US (Boston University, Princeton University, Georgetown Law, Yale Law School, MIT, and Fordham Law) and in the UK (London School of Economics, King's College London, Queen Mary, University of Oxford) as well as several EU based scholars (Sciences Po Paris, NEXA Center/University of Torino, Vrije Universiteit Belgium).

 

To date, this project features collaborative work and discussions with the following scholars and Institutions:

• Dr Wendell Wallach – The Hastings Center & Institute for Ethics & Emerging Tech, USA

• Dr Aylin Caliskan – FATM, Princeton University, USA

• Prof Julie Cohen - Georgetown Law, USA

• Prof Joel Reidenberg - Fordham Law, USA

• Prof Julie Floyd - Boston University, USA

• Prof Mike Rustad - Suffolk University, USA

• Prof Thomas Koenig – Northeastern University USA

• Dr Marlene Jia – Strategic and Technical Advisor at TopBots Inc. California, USA

• Prof Andrew Murray - London School of Economics, UK

• Dr Paul Girard – Medialab co-director, Sciences Po Paris, FR

• Prof Karen Yeung – University of Birmingham, UK

• Prof Roger Brownsword – King’s College London, UK

• Dr Dimitrios Pinotsis – Massachusetts Institute of Technology USA

• Dr Nikolaos Aletras - University College London & Amazon Research,UK

• Dr Dimitris Tsarapatsanis – Sheffield University, UK

• Prof Luciano Floridi - University of Oxford, UK

• Prof Chris Reed - Queen Mary University London, UK

• Prof Ugo Pagallo - NEXA/University of Torino, IT

• Prof Mireille Hildebrandt - Vrije Universiteit Brussel,BE & Radboud University Nijmegen,NL

 

For a reflective piece on the early stages of the “13AI” project, see here

Podcast interviews from this project are available in our podcasting section here (add link to the podcasting section on the website)

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Project Lead:

Dr Argyro Karanasiou

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Research Support:

Fakhar Raza, University of Greenwich

Sarah Olliffe, Bournemouth University

Laura Hampshaw, Bournemouth University

Josh Deerman, Bournemouth University

Tanesha Duff, Bournemouth University