- 16th of April 2024, 1 p.m.- 2 p.m.CET (online)
Webinar | The Digital Service Act’s Red Line: What the Commission Can and Cannot Do About Disinformation
In this DRAILS workshop, we had the pleasure of welcoming Prof. Martin Husovec for a presentation on The Digital Service Act’s Red Line: What the Commission Can and Cannot Do About Disinformation, followed by a discussion with the audience.
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- 26th of March 2024, 1 p.m.- 2 p.m.CET (online)
Webinar | “Legally Blind? Findings on Transparency and Explainability through a Study of AI-Powered Trademark Search Engines”
In this DRAILS workshop, we had the pleasure of welcoming Prof. Julien Cabay and Thomas Vandamme for a presentation on AI & TM Search : “Legally Blind? Findings on Transparency and Explainability through a Study of AI-Powered Trademark Search Engines”, followed by a discussion with the audience.
In the framework of our research project IPSAM (Intellectual Property Similarities Assessment Model), we subjected several publicly available trademark search engines to close scrutiny.
In the course of our study, we encountered several methodological and practical difficulties that in turn, evidenced normative issues related to transparency and explainability. Should we compute and process possibly inconsistent case law? How can we identify legal biases in technical solutions? Is it possible to study technologies despite trade secret protection? What methodology can we develop for evidencing overfitting? Should we limit transparency to AI qualify as ‘high-risk’?
And the critical question: are we legally blind?
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- 12th of March 2024, 1 p.m.- 2 p.m.CET (online)
Webinar | Introduction to Natural Language Processing: What is it and what can we do with it in the legal realm?
In this DRAILS workshop, we had the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Christof Koolen for a presentation on Introduction to Natural Language Processing: What is it and what can we do with it in the legal realm?, followed by a discussion with the audience.
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- 29th of November 2023, 1 p.m.- 2 p.m.CET (online)
Webinar | Profiling consumers through Big Data Analytics
In this DRAILS workshop, we had the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Maja Nišević for a presentation on her latest book, Profiling consumers through Big Data Analytics: The interplay between the GDPR and Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, followed by a discussion with the audience.
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- 8th of November 2023, 1 p.m.- 2 p.m.CET (online)
Webinar | Robotics, AI and Criminal Law
In this DRAILS workshop, we had the pleasure of welcoming Kamil Mamak for a presentation on his latest book, Robotics, AI and Criminal Law, followed by a discussion with the audience.
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- 25th of October 2023, 1 p.m.- 2 p.m.CET (online)
Webinar | Person, Thing, Robot
In this DRAILS workshop, we had the pleasure of welcoming David J. Gunkel for a presentation on his latest book, Person, Thing, Robot, followed by a discussion with the audience.
Why robots defy our existing moral and legal categories and how to revolutionize the way we think about them.
Robots are a curious sort of thing. On the one hand, they are technological artifacts—and thus, things. On the other hand, they seem to have social presence, because they talk and interact with us, and simulate the capabilities commonly associated with personhood. In Person, Thing, Robot, David J. Gunkel sets out to answer the vexing question: What exactly is a robot? Rather than try to fit robots into the existing categories by way of arguing for either their reification or personification, however, Gunkel argues for a revolutionary reformulation of the entire system, developing a new moral and legal ontology for the twenty-first century and beyond.
In this book, Gunkel investigates how and why efforts to use existing categories to classify robots fail, argues that “robot” designates an irreducible anomaly in the existing ontology, and formulates an alternative that restructures the ontological order in both moral philosophy and law. Person, Thing, Robot not only addresses the issues that are relevant to students, teachers, and researchers working in the fields of moral philosophy, philosophy of technology, science and technology studies (STS), and AI/robot law and policy but it also speaks to controversies that are important to AI researchers, robotics engineers, and computer scientists concerned with the social consequences of their work.
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- 11th of October 2023, 1 p.m.- 2 p.m.CET (online)
Webinar | Red-teaming as an avenue for international cooperation on AI
In this DRAILS workshop, we will have the pleasure of welcoming Hadrien Pouget for a presentation on Red-teaming as an avenue for international cooperation on AI, followed by a discussion with the audience.
♦ Attendance is free but registration online is required to receive the invitation.
Red-teaming has emerged as a best-practice among developers of frontier AI systems, especially large language models (LLMs). The voluntary commitments made by seven leading AI labs in partnership with the White House featured red-teaming as an essential tool. By having participants test a system adversarially, undesirable behaviours can be better identified and mitigated. Opening up this exercise to the international community could offer a compelling first step in establishing more formal form of international AI governance. A successful project would contribute to a shared appreciation of the risks and benefits these systems provide, and a platform to develop and disseminate best practices. However, there are a number of public and private interests at play that must be acknowledged, and many possible arrangements.
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- 25th of September 2023, 1 p.m.- 2 p.m.CET (online)
Webinar | AI Governance in the US and China
In this DRAILS workshop, we had the pleasure of welcoming Hemmie Hine for the presentation of her latest paper "Governing Silicon Valley and Shenzhen: Assessing a New Era of Artificial Intelligence Governance in the US and China", followed by a discussion with the audience.
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11th of September 2023, 1 p.m.- 2 p.m.CET (online)
Webinar | Regulation by design in the governance of digital technologies
In this DRAILS workshop, we had the pleasure of welcoming Marco Almada for a presentation on Regulation by design in the governance of digital technologies, followed by a discussion with the audience.
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26th of June 2023, 12 a.m. - 1 p.m. CET (online)
Webinar | Vulnerability and Data Protection Law
In this DRAILS workshop, we had the pleasure of welcoming Prof. Gianclaudio Malgieri for a presentation on his latest book, Vulnerability and Data Protection Law, followed by a discussion with the audience.
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15th of June 2023, 12 a.m. - 1 p.m. CET (online)
Webinar | Smart Cities and Human Rights
In this DRAILS workshop, we had the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Alina Wernick for a presentation on Smart Cities and Human Rights, followed by a discussion with the audience.
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8th of May 2023, 4 pm to 5 pm CET (online)
Webinar | Algorithmic regulation in between the rule of law and the rule by law
In this DRAILS workshop, we had the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Nathalie A. Smuha, for a presentation on Algorithmic regulation in between the rule of law and the rule by law, followed by a discussion with the audience.
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25th of April 2023, 12 a.m. to 1 p.m. CET (online)
Webinar | Human rights protection and A.I. Will the EU AI Act and the CoE Convention on AI provide adequate human rights protection and what is the role of National Human Rights Structures in their creation and enforcement?
We had the the pleasure of welcoming Nele Roekens, who will deliver a presentation on Human protection and AI, followed by a discussion with the audience.
During this session Nele Roekens will highlight challenges posed by AI on human rights and explore some solutions to these, with a focus on non-discrimination. Existing legislative frameworks are insufficient to meet specific AI-related challenges. This is widely recognized and legislators – including the European Commission and Council of Europe – are at an advanced stage of negotiating new legal frameworks. She will comment on these legislative initiatives from a human rights perspective and highlight on the potential role of National Human rights Structures (NHRSs) within their creation, implementation and enforcement.
Nele Roekens is legal advisor at Unia, equality body and National Human Rights Institution (B status). She specializes in equality law and human rights challenges posed by emerging technologies. She is co-chair of the Working Group on AI of the European Network of National Human Rights Institutions and represents this network at the Council of Europe during the ongoing negotiations on the framework Convention on AI and Human Rights. She is member of AI4Belgium’s Ethics and Law Working Group.
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30th of March 2023, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. CET (online)
Webinar | AI & detection of anticompetitive behaviours
We had the pleasure of welcoming Jérôme De Cooman in our DRAILS workshop series, for a talk followed by a discussion on AI detection of anti-competitive behaviours.
Artificial Intelligence (hereafter, ‘AI’) systems are widely adopted by public administrations. Competition law does not escape the rule. Recently, non-negligible efforts have been made in ex officio detection of anticompetitive behaviours (above all, bid-rigging) through AI-driven cartel screening. This is unsurprising. On the one hand, AI systems promise to address well-documented flaws in human decision-making, e.g., arbitrariness or bias. On the other hand, AI systems carries the potential to strengthen ex officio investigations. Collusive behaviours are, currently, mainly exposed through leniency applications, whose number is decreasing. It has been suggested AI-driven cartel screening constitutes a useful complement to leniency programmes. AI-driven cartel screening flags indicators of collusion that then trigger the need for further investigation. This increases the probability of detection that destabilises the collusive equilibrium and incentivises leniency applications.
This presentation does not discard the benefits of AI-driven cartel screening. It argues, however, that this algorithmic shift it is not a silver bullet. First, as a data-driven solution, algorithmic predictions and recommendations are significantly affected by problems in the availability and quality of data they rely on. Second, limited explicability of some AI systems challenges the duty to state reason that will only be satisfied if public servants using AI systems are able to disclose how the different parameters were weighted and to what extent that recommendation was decisive for their final decision.
None of these drawbacks constitute a dead-end. Although not applicable to EU competition law, the EU Proposal for an AI Act provides interesting (at least, embryonic) solutions, i.e., data quality (art. 10 AI Act), transparency (art. 13 AI Act), human oversight (art. 14 AI Act), and accuracy (art. 15 AI Act). Drawing inspiration from these requirements, the presentation seeks to assess how to ensure the improvement of competition law proceedings while safeguarding fundamental rights.
Jérôme De Cooman is Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Nicolas Petit (European University Institute, Italy) and Prof. Dr. Pieter Van Cleynenbreugel (University of Liege, Belgium). His research focuses on whether, how, and when to regulate technologies (artificial intelligence in particular). As part of his Ph.D. research, Jerome pays very particular attention to the modernisation of competition law proceedings and the algorithmic shift in the fight against cartelisation.
Jérôme is currently a Visiting Student at European University Institute studying the path dependence of regulations.
Jérôme is also teaching assistant at University of Liege since 2018 in EU Competition Law and EU law, (Big) Data and AI Applications courses. Since 2021, he is Administrative Manager at the Brussels School of Competition, Junior Editor for the Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies (YARS) at the Centre for Antitrust and Regulatory Studies (CARS, University of Warsaw, Poland), and Junior Member of the Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA).
Jérôme holds a Master of Laws from the University of Liege (2017), a Master of Management Sciences from HEC-Liege (2018), and the Law, Cognitive & Artificial Intelligence Technology Programme Certification from the Brussels School of Competition (2019).
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20th of March 2023, 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. CET (online)
Webinar | Data Cartels. The Companies That Control and Monopolize Our Information.
We had the pleasure of welcoming Prof. Sarah Lamdan as a guest in our DRAILS workshop series. She offered a presentation of her latest book Data Cartels. The Companies That Control and Monopolize Our Information, followed by a discussion with attendees.
Data Cartels. The Companies That Control and Monopolize Our Information
Her latest book, Data Cartels, revolves around the fact that, in our digital world, data is power. It brings us into the unregulated underworld of information hoarding businesses, where they reign supreme, using intimidation, aggression, and force to maintain influence and control over data. It demonstrates how the entities mining, commodifying, and selling our data and informational resources perpetuate social inequalities and threaten the democratic sharing of knowledge.
It is a reality today that just a few companies dominate most of our critical informational resources. Often self-identifying as "data analytics" or "business solutions" operations, they supply the digital lifeblood that flows through the circulatory system of the internet. With their control over data, they can prevent the free flow of information, masterfully exploiting outdated information and privacy laws and curating online information in a way that amplifies digital racism and targets marginalized communities. They can also distribute private information to predatory entities. Alarmingly, everything they're doing is perfectly legal.
In this book, Lamdan contends that privatization and tech exceptionalism have prevented us from creating effective legal regulation. This in turn has allowed oversized information oligopolies to coalesce. In addition to specific legal and market-based solutions, Lamdan calls for treating information like a public good and creating digital infrastructure that supports our democratic ideals.
Sarah Lamdan is Professor of Law at the City University of New York School of Law. She also serves as a Senior Fellow for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a Fellow at NYU School of Law's Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy.
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27th of February 2023, 12:30 a.m. to 13:30 p.m. CET (online)
Webinar | The legislative instruments overlap in the copyright law and its impact on the freedom to operate
We had the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Ana Ramalho as a guest in our DRAILS workshop series. She offered a presentation on The legislative instruments overlap in the copyright law and its impact on the freedom to operate, followed by a Q/A session.
The EU legislative activity regulating the digital realm has been increasingly prolific. The overlap of instruments in the current legal framework has already been highlighted by previous research, for example, in relation to the European Media Freedom Act. One of the consequences of this overlap is the growing difficulty that market actors feel in defining their freedom to operate. This presentation will zoom in on a particular field - copyright law - and on how recent legislative developments, such as the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market and the Digital Services Act, interact. The presentation will highlight possible gaps, overlaps and inconsistencies, and the impact that those might have on the freedom to operate of market actors.
Dr. Ana Ramalho is Copyright Counsel at Google. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor at Maastricht University, where she founded the Indie Art Legal Clinic (a pro bono legal advice service for artists and cultural entrepreneurs) and was awarded several grants and prizes, including the Fellowship from the IP Institute of Japan and the World Universities Network Research Mobility Award. Ana holds a PhD in Copyright and European Law from the University of Amsterdam (2014), a Research Master in Intellectual Property Law from the University of Lisbon (2008), and an LL.M. in Intellectual Property and Competition Law from the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center (2007). She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of World Intellectual Property. She has been a guest lecturer and/or speaker at several foreign Universities and institutions. Ana’s most recent publications include a book on intellectual property protection for AI-generated creations (Routledge, 2022), and a co-edited book on International Perspectives on Disability Exceptions in Copyright Law and the Visual Arts (Routledge, 2021).
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- 9th of February 2023, 1:00 p.m. to 2 p.m. CET (online)
Webinar | Interface between trade secret and access to information in the context of the Artificial Intelligence Act
We had the pleasure of welcoming LL.D. Ulla-Maija Mylly as a guest in our DRAILS workshop series.
She discussed the “Interface between trade secret and access to information in the context of the Artificial Intelligence Act”.
LL.D. Ulla-Maija Mylly joined Hanken School of Economics in May 2022 when she was appointed as Associate professor in Commercial Law. She is currently serving Hanken as Academy Research Fellow and working on her Academy of Finland funded research project on trade secrets and data-driven economy. She was a TIAS postdoctoral collegium researcher at the Turku Institute of Advanced Studies 2017-2019. She did her first LL.M. at University of Turku and the second at Kyushu University, Japan (International Trade and Business Law). Ulla-Maija has earlier worked among others in various research positions at the Turku School of Economics, University of Turku faculty of law, and as a practicing lawyer. She is trained on the bench. August 2017 – July 2018 she was a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford Intellectual Property Research Center. For September – December 2022 she was a Visiting Researcher at King’s College London, Dickson Poon School of Law.
Ulla-Maija’s research interest covers copyright, patent law and trade secrets, and she has published research related to the fundamental rights as well. Mylly’s research interest lies on the underlying justifications for the regimes in question and potential differences these produce for interpretations. During the Academy of Finland funding period (2021-2026) Mylly will dissect the ambivalent nature of European trade secret protection between the intellectual property and unfair competition paradigms from the perspective of data-driven economy. The research will analyze ways to interpret the provisions of the Trade Secrets Directive in a manner that would be most suitable for the data-driven economy and to the needs of competition and innovation.
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16th of January 2023, 12:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. CET Brussels time (online)
Webinar | Internet of Things and the Law: Legal Strategies for Consumer-Centric Smart Technologies
We had the pleasure of welcoming Dr Guido Noto La Diega as a guest in our DRAILS workshop series. They presented their latest book, Internet of Things and the Law: Legal Strategies for Consumer-Centric Smart Technologies.
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12th of October 2022, 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. CET Brussels time (online)
Webinar | The normative power of dominant digital platforms
In this DRAILS 's public event, we had the chance to host Aurore Troussel for an online workshop dedicated to the presentation of her research on the normative power of dominant digital platforms.
Aurore Troussel first offered a presentation, followed by a Q/A session.
The normative power of dominant digital platforms.
The past decades are characterized by the meteoric rise of digital platforms. Simultaneously, the number of scandals involving platforms increased and raised growing concerns about the unchecked power of these companies. Beyond the conventional threats posed by platforms and identified by the literature (e.g., platforms’ monopoly, fake news, personal data breaches, etc.), platforms are transforming our relations to the law and the regulation overall. This phenomenon is more subtle than the above-mentioned glaring issues, however it is at least equally important in relation to the rule of law. The analysis of the balance of powers between governments and digital platforms shows that a competition between States’ regulation and platforms’ regulation emerges. This phenomenon is of particular importance and needs to be documented. To understand how digital platforms are regulating cyberspace, it is necessary to analyze their architecture, tools, and behavior. This presentation sheds some light on the normative power of dominant digital platforms by providing an overview of their governance tools.
Aurore Troussel is a PhD student in law and innovation at the University of Montreal and HEC Paris. Her thesis focuses on the normative value of computer code and digital platforms. Aurore works as an affiliated researcher at the Cyberjustice Laboratory (Canada), where she mainly works on the development of machine learning algorithms for the analysis of court decisions. Aurore also works for the SMART Law Hub, a research laboratory in law and artificial intelligence hosted by HEC Paris and Institut Polytechnique. Aurore is qualified at the Paris Bar and specializes in data protection and competition law. She holds a master's degree in European business law from Panthéon-Assas University and an LLM in law and international management from HEC Paris. During her training, Aurore had several professional experiences, including internships at the European Commission (competition law), in international law firms (Norton Rose Fulbright and Steptoe & Johnson), and in lobbying. In addition, Aurore worked as a legal counsel for an online dispute resolution start-up (justice.cool) for one year.
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- 15th of June 2022, 12:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. CET (online)
The PROSEco project and the DRAILS group had the chance to host Paul Belleflamme for an online workshop dedicated to the presentation of his latest book: The Economics of Platforms - Concepts and Strategy.
Paul Belleflamme first offered a 20/30 mins presentation, followed by a Q/A session.
Paul’s main research area is theoretical industrial organization, with a special focus on innovation in the digital economy (which is also the main topic of his blog, www.IPdigIT.eu). Paul has published widely in leading economics journals and, with Martin Peitz, is the author of Industrial Organization: Markets and Strategies (Cambridge University Press, 2010 and 2015). Paul is a fellow of the CESifo Research Network. He is associate editor of Journal of Economics, co-editor of E-conomics and managing editor of Regards Economiques. He also served as associate editor of Information Economics and Policy, and of Review of Network Economics.
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- 24th of March 2022 (Teams)
Webinar | Negociating the legal status of AI systems in the EU
In this DRAILS 's public event, Diana Mocanu presented her latest paper "Negotiating the legal status of AI systems in the EU".
- 17th of February 2022 (Teams)
Webinar | AI technologies in the field of creative industries for copyright and related rights
This DRAILS conference was dedicated to “The impact of deployment of AI technologies in the field of creative industries for copyright and related rights”, and presented by Alain Strowel, Sari Depreeuw and Luc Desaunettes-Barbero.
Over the last few years, AI solutions have been deployed in the cultural and creative sector to assist or complete the process of creation. The reliance on AI technologies for or during the creative process might yet challenge copyright and/or related rights. Questions arise concerning the use of protected inputs for developing AI technologies or concerning the protection afforded to creative contributors in relation to the outcome of the AI-powered process. Based on several examples, the presentation will provide an overview of the current issues and discuss how they could be addressed at EU level.
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- 1er juin 2021 (Zoom)
Webinaire | Au-delà de l'explicabilité: justifiabilité et contestabilité des systèmes de décision algorithmiques
Cette 10e conférence DRAILS fut l'occasion d'engager une discussion avec Daniel Le Métayer et Clément Henin à partir de leur article : Au-delà de l'explicabilité: justifiabilité et contestabilité des systèmes de décision algorithmiques
Les participant·e·s étaient invité·es à prendre part activement à la discussion.
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- 19 mai 2021
Conférence publique | Présentation des recherches menées au sein de la Chaire Intelligence artificielle responsable à l’échelle mondiale de l’Université d’Ottawa.
Céline Castets-Renard, Professeure titulaire à l’Université d’Ottawa, Faculté de droit civil, titulaire de la Chaire Intelligence artificielle, responsable à l’échelle mondiale, et Eleonore Fournier-Tombs, Coordinatrice de la Chaire de recherche sur l’IA responsable dans un contexte mondial à l’Université d’Ottawa, présentèrent un projet concernant les « Usages de l’Intelligence Artificielle dans la lutte contre la covid-19 au Sénégal et Mali »;
Anne-Sophie Hulin, Post-doctorante au sein d’ANITI [France] et de l’Université d’Ottawa, présentera un projet de recherche qu’elle conduit sur « les Fiducies de données ».
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4 mai 2021 :
Conférence ouverte sur la réglementation européenne de #IA, présentée par les experts en cybersécurité, données et confidentialité Diletta De Cicco et Charles Helleputte, et par les membres de DRAILS.
→ "The EU artificial intelligence Act - key aspects" : présentation ou poster
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- 1 avril 2021
Discussion around the newly published book New Laws of Robotics - Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI with its author, Frank Pasquale, Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, NY.
Talk by our guest, followed by a Q&A session