Athens Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence and the Rule of Law

Attorney at law Anna Kaczyńska, Member of AEA-EAL Young Lawyers Committee participated on 16-17 November in the 2020 online edition of The Athens Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence and the Rule of Law. The Roundtable was co-founded in 2019 by IEEE SA, The Future Society, and ELONtech (The European Law Observatory on New Technologies, the initiative exploring the interface of law and new technologies, http://www.elontech.org/). The Roundtable is a major international, multi- stakeholder event specifically focused on legal systems and the rule of law. The 2020 virtual event ( https://www.europarl.europa.eu/stoa/en/events/details/the-athens-roundtable-on-artificial-inte/20201029WKS03042), co- hosted from New York City by inter alia STOA (The Scientific Foresight Unit) together with UNESCO, gathered more than 700 policy-makers, executives, legislators, regulators, judges, lawyers, academics, advocates and other stakeholders from five continents. The event aimed to review the progress of the AI governance initiatives of key participating regulatory and non-regulatory bodies, to hear the perspectives of senior representatives of global corporations and civil society stakeholders, to exchange views on emerging best practices, to discuss the world’s most mature AI standards and certifications initiatives, and to examine those initiatives in the context of specific real-world AI applications. One of important aspects covered by the event was the relation between new technologies, AI, ethics and human right. Also the role of the lawyers in reducing bias in AI systems (during an interesting breakout session with ELONtech participation) as well as proactive legal ethics in the age of AI were stressed and discussed. The context of AI and online dispute resolutions was inspiring too as ADR and ODR are more and more used and popular and more and more connected with the use of new technologies, especially in COVID-19 pandemic times. The Speakers underlined the need of continuous, ongoing dialogue on current core issues concerning AI, on its regulation and the impact and challenges from the point of view of the rule of law, Human rights and privacy. Having in mind all those interesting Roundtable’s discussions, privacy as protected e.g. by the GDPR provisions,  can be a good reference to a certain conclusion’s attempt – that trying to make the AI solutions and tools more and more useful, reliable and technologically perfect, ethics and trying to eliminate bias should be included as essential elements in those processes too, and by design.