IPI at international conference “Multidisciplinary perspectives on algorithms” at Kyushu University
During 21. and 23. November the International Programs in Law of the Kyushu University’s Faculty of Law organized the conference Multidisciplinary perspectives on algorithms. Tjaša Zapušek, research assistant at IPI presented recent findings of her PhD research at University of Zürich.
Tjaša Zapušek talked about differences between three different ‘decision-making processes’ that occur as a consequence of three different types of systems, namely, three different types of algorithms. Through this systematization she examined legal concerns regarding foreseeability and certainty of the system’s actions and applicability of existing legal rules. The increasing complexity of algorithms that are governing autonomous systems will result in systems with sophisticated self-learning capabilities, and more importantly, in the ability of creating unforeseeable and autonomous decisions. From a legal perspective, the test of foreseeability can be described with a sentence whether a person can see/recognize a systematic relationship between the type of accident that the plaintiff suffered and the defendant’s wrongdoing. Considering the aspect of foreseeability, a defendant may escape liability if scientists cannot predict a systematic relationship between wrongdoing and harm.
In the past couple of years, the model complexity has grown substantially. Some of these algorithms are often considered as ‘black boxes’, identifying that there is still lots of obscurity surrounding their operation. Even though the latter often rewards us with models of higher accuracy and productivity, it usually comes at the expense of human interpretability.
The main goal of this event was to prevent that this issue leads to either under or overregulation and to bring together experts with a background in law, technology, economics, sociology, and ethics to address the issue.
On September 16, 2023, Dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič participated in the event @Re:Source MAH – the 10th International Conference on Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology. The program was divided into various categories (“tracks”), specifically focusing on the documentation and preservation of media arts; climate change; pioneers of media arts; and the history of media arts in museums.
The U.S. Copyright Office has once again denied the registration of an artwork created by artificial intelligence. Artist Jason M. Allen was unsuccessful in his second attempt to register the artwork “Theatre D’opera Spatial” as a copyrighted work because it contains more than a de minimis amount of content generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
On Friday 23 June 2023, a webinar entitled “Copyright and Legal Basis for Generative Artificial Intelligence Training” was held as the inaugural event of an informal research network in the region in the field of copyright. Researchers from Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and North Macedonia participated in the event, which is part of the national Open Knowledge Day initiative and the national and regional coordination activities carried out by ODIPI under the auspices of Knowledge Rights 21.
The new report of the Knowledge Rights 21 project partner SPARC Europe is now available.