Artificial Intelligence

In EU composite proceedings, Open Data can serve many public interests in a new way, leading to faster and more accurate decision-making enabling truly ‘effective’ administrative action. The governance of interoperable public data across EU and member States, including Open Data, is one of the ongoing challenges in a digital world where administrations as platforms compete with each other, while Artificial Intelligence and the so-called space economy open up new frontiers for public law.

March 2024 has been the apex of a sort of race as to which international organisation would be the first to adopt an instrument trying to regulate the development, production, and use of artificial intelligence. The paper highlights the advantages and disadvantages of a Council of Europe treaty, such as the Draft Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law, as opposed to an EU regulation, such as the so-called “Artificial Intelligence Act”. The content of Draft Framework Convention is presented only briefly, before explaining why there is a case for a Council of Europe Treaty on Artificial Intelligence. The instrument of a Council of Europe Convention is then compared to the instrument of an EU Regulation, especially in terms of the limits resulting from the respective competences of the Council of Europe and the European Union, as well as the consequences of the need for ratification of the Council of Europe treaty as opposed to the direct applicability of the EU regulation.

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in financial markets requires a balanced and proactive approach. The distinction between weak and strong AI systems highlights the need to adapt the sector legislation with respect to the sudden growth of the autonomy of the algorithms. The challenge is to balance natural technological development with market security. The balancing of human responsibility with the socialization of damages and with daring innovative solutions, such as the recognition of the legal personality of advanced AI systems or “smart law” hypotheses, would help jurists to manage, with less uncertainty, the new dynamics of financial markets.

This article summarises the approval process of the Artificial Intelligence Act Proposal, particularly concerning high-risk predictive algorithms, to assess the effect of this legislative change.

This contribution summarises the main amendments adopted by the European Parliament during its first reading of the EU’s Proposal for a Regulation on Artificial Intelligence (AI Act). It outlines the impact of this Act, if adopted with such amendments, on automated administrative decision-making (“adm-ADM”), and examines the margin Member States will have to supplement such provisions in their respective national administrative procedure acts. It concludes that the AI Act is a necessary piece of legislation and that, if adopted with some of the Parliament’s amendments, it will adequately regulate the development and use of AI systems by European public authorities, setting a high regulatory standard that can be reinforced by national legislators.

This paper examines the implementation of artificial intelligence in decision-making processes within public administration, with a focus on addressing the challenges of transparency, accountability, and the intelligibility of AI-generated decisions. The paper discusses the importance of imputability in decisions made with deep learning algorithms. It emphasises that by granting public administrations full control over the training dataset, source code, and knowledge base, the imputability of the decision can be ensured. This control enables administrations to validate the relevancy and accuracy of the algorithm's training data, address potential biases, and comply with legal and ethical requirements. The paper then proposes the use of Large Language Models (LLM) as a solution to enhance the transparency and motivation behind AI-assisted decisions. It highlights that LLMs can generate articulate and comprehensible textual outputs that closely resemble human-generated decisions, allowing for a deeper understanding of the decision-making process. Furthermore, the paper emphasises the significance of providing access to the training dataset, source code, and individual administrative precedents to enhance transparency and accountability. It argues that by offering these components, stakeholders can evaluate the validity and reliability of AI-assisted decisions, fostering trust in the decision-making process.

Public administration is immersed in a major technological disruption that raises interesting questions and legal debates. The use of artificial intelligence is undoubtedly one of them. However, this phenomenon must be analysed in the context of the general transformation that the public sector is undergoing, the so-called “public governance”, with all that this implies, in short, a new relationship between citizens and public authorities, which marks the scenario in which the current Administration must act. Bearing in mind that the very essence of administrative law hinges on a constant duality, this paper analyses the use of artificial intelligence in the public sector, seeking the eternal balance between efficiency and guarantees.

This article addresses the legal order of the digital sphere, focusing on the constitutional dimension. In particular, the new freedoms that have come into being with the advent of technology, especially digital platforms. There are doubts about the effectiveness of regulatory intervention, such as that attempted by the EU whose purpose seems to focus on sanctions for violations rather than on promoting freedoms. The article emphasizes the positives rather than the negatives of a digital legal order, while recognizing the problems with the digital market where the large companies exercise a dominant and anti-competitive position. The article also addresses the issue of democracy on the Internet and the challenge of misinformation.

This contribution analyses the German legal framework concerning automated decision-making systems. Public administration in Germany uses automated decision-making systems primarily to adopt partially or fully automated administrative acts. Accordingly, this paper focuses on automated administrative acts, however, it also discusses the first comprehensive regulation of artificial intelligence enacted by a German “Bundesland”. The paper approaches the topic from three different perspectives: The German legislative framework, case-law and soft-law concerning automated decision-making systems.

Automated decision-making has been discussed in Austrian administrative law for more than 40 years. The focus has always been on the administrative act (in the sense of a formal individual decision) and the pertaining procedure. In this area, there are established principles, although new technologies raise new questions. Beyond the administrative act, we are still very much in the dark.