DEEP DIVE I LE DOSSIER I EL INFORME
Why Lawyers Should Care About AI Bastiaan BRUYNDONCKX L’intelligence artificielle (IA) envahit notre quotidien
à un rythme effréné. Cet article explique ce qu’est l’IA et les défis juridiques et éthiques qu’elle entraîne. En outre, l’article explique comment la Commission européenne propose de traiter ces questions à travers sa proposition de règlement du Parlement européen et du Conseil établissant des règles harmonisées sur l’intelligence artificielle, qui a été publiée le 21 avril 2021.
Introduction Artificial Intelligence (AI) is invading our daily lives at a fast pace. Nowadays, credit card applications use algorithms to evaluate our creditworthiness. Algorithms evaluating data from physical activity trackers such as Apple Watch® and Fitbit® decide upon health insurance premiums due. Voice assistants integrated in smartphones and tablets and using Natural Language Processing (NLP) assist us in our daily tasks such as checking Fairness and nonthe weather forecast and discrimination consulting our calendars. Aurefer to the various tonomous vehicles appear in the streets. In the office, documented instances IP lawyers make use of sofwhere AI systems have tware predicting the chances been proven to be of success of a claim for trabiased or discriminate demark infringement. Police against people. departments make use of real-time predictive policing to determine the areas to be patrolled on a given day at a given time. In the US, algorithms assist courts in making decisions on the granting of parole to prisoners or the granting of bail to detainees. When we arrive home after a hard day of work, Netflix’s recommender system suggests movies and series based on our past movie consumption. When checking social media before going to sleep, our timeline is determined by algorithms of the likes of Facebook® and Twitter® and
32 ❘ JURISTE INTERNATIONAL ❘ 2 2021 ■
La Inteligencia Artificial (IA) está invadiendo nuestra
vida diaria a un ritmo acelerado. Este artículo explica qué es la IA y qué desafíos legales y éticos conlleva. Además, el artículo analiza cómo la Comisión Europea propone abordar estas cuestiones a través de su Propuesta de Reglamento del Parlamento Europeo y del Consejo por el que se establecen normas armonizadas sobre inteligencia artificial, que se publicó el 21 de abril de 2021.
sophisticated algorithms ‘serve’ us advertisements based upon our search history and online behaviour. The number of examples is limitless.
Defining AI How to define ‘Artificial Intelligence’ is subject to a fierce debate between “minimalists” and “maximalists”. Minimalists such as Alan Turing argued that machines are “intelligent” as soon as they can fool a human person into thinking that the machine is a human person. Hence, for a machine to be intelligent, it would be sufficient to mimic human intelligence. Maximalists contend that machines should be able to ‘think’ as humans before they can be considered “intelligent”. For the purposes of this short article, we refer to John McCarthy, the person who first coined the term, to mean “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable.” He further defines “intelligence” as “the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world. Varying kinds and degrees of intelligence occur in people, many animals and some machines.”1 It is important to note that AI is not a new field of science. It has been around since 1942, when Isaac Asimov defined
1. http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/whatisai.pdf
