Thammasat University students are cordially invited to participate in a free Zoom book talk on We, the Robots?: Regulating Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of the Law.

The event will be organized by the Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and will take place on Tuesday, September 28, 2021 starting at noon Bangkok time.

The Thammasat University Library collection includes many books about different aspects of robots and artificial intelligence (AI).

The speaker will be Professor Simon Chesterman, Dean of the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and Senior Director of AI Governance at AI Singapore.

The event website notes:

Earlier this year, the European Union proposed a draft regulation to protect the fundamental rights of its citizens from certain applications of artificial intelligence (AI). In June, the Biden Administration launched a task force seeking to spur AI innovation. On the same day, China adopted its new Data Security Law, asserting a stronger role for the state in controlling the data that fuels AI. These three approaches — rights, markets, sovereignty — highlight the competing priorities as governments grapple with how to reap the benefits of AI while minimizing harm. Which approach is correct, and what is missing? This presentation will discuss whether, when, and how to regulate AI.

Students may register for the Zoom webinar at this link.

For further information or with any questions, kindly write to Ms. Grace Chan at this email address:

mcgrace@hku.hk

As its website indicates,

AI Singapore (AISG) is a national AI programme launched by the National Research Foundation (NRF) to anchor deep national capabilities in Artificial Intelligence (AI) thereby creating social and economic impacts, grow the local talent, build an AI ecosystem, and put Singapore on the world map.

The programme office is hosted by the National University of Singapore (NUS) and brings together all Singapore-based research institutions and the vibrant ecosystem of AI start-ups and companies developing AI products to perform use-inspired research, grow the knowledge, create the tools, and develop the talent to power Singapore’s AI efforts.

AISG is driven by a government-wide partnership comprising NRF, the Smart Nation and Digital Government Office (SNDGO), the Economic Development Board (EDB), the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), SGInnovate, and the Integrated Health Information Systems (IHiS).

The TU Library collection includes a number of books by Professor Chesterman, and TU students have free access to We, the Robots?: Regulating Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of the Law through the Cambridge Core collection database of the TU Library.

We, the Robots?: Regulating Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of the Law may be downloaded by students at this link.

Professor Chesterman observes that robots have been part of human culture for a century. It is worth making sure that they continue to support people rather than taking our place in future.

He points out that most suggestions for AI Ethics include variations on the following six themes:

Human control — AI should augment rather than reduce human potential.

Transparency — AI should be capable of being understood.

Safety — AI should perform as intended and be resistant to hacking.

Accountability — Remedies should be available when harm results.

Non-discrimination — AI systems should be inclusive and ‘fair’, avoiding impermissible bias.

Privacy – The data that powers AI, in particular personal data, should be protected.

Yet little effort has been made to implement these guidelines internationally.

Professor Chesterman suggests that since most nations already have laws in place ensuring accountability, non-discrimination, and privacy in AI usage, further statutes may not be strictly necessary.

The preface of We, the Robots?: Regulating Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of the Law follows:

Artificial intelligence is transforming modern life. From self-driving cars and high-speed trading to algorithmic decision-making, the way we live, work, and play is increasingly dependent on AI systems that operate with diminishing human intervention. Regulation of these developments is made difficult by the pace of change and wariness of constraining innovation, but also conceptual and practical challenges that AI poses to traditional regulatory models. These challenges comprise the speed of modern computing, the autonomy of certain AI systems, and their increasing opacity. This book examines how existing legal tools can be adapted to the new environment, as well as what additional rules and institutions are needed – including the role that AI can and should play in regulating itself.

Most work in this area concentrates on the activities of lawyers, their potential clients, or the machines themselves. This book focuses on those who seek to regulate those activities and the difficulties that AI systems pose to government and governance more generally. Rather than taking specific actors or activities as the starting point, the book emphasizes structural problems that AI poses for meaningful regulation as such. A key contribution is the use of three lenses to distinguish among discrete regulatory dilemmas: the practical management of risk associated with new technologies, the morality of certain functions being undertaken by machines at all, and the legitimacy gap when public authorities delegate their powers to algorithms.

The central argument is that regulation, in the sense used here to mean public control, requires active involvement of states. Yet the qualities of AI – speed, autonomy, opacity – make the issue of its regulation impossible for any one state to confront alone. In normal circumstances, international law and institutions could play a co-ordinating role, as they do in areas from weapons of mass destruction to climate change and pandemics. A second hurdle, however, is that those states at the forefront of AI development – China and the United States – are, for different reasons, among those wariest of international law and institutions constraining their economic development and political independence. The result is that the states with the greatest leverage to establish global norms on AI presently have the least interest in doing so.

By offering a public law and international law perspective on these questions, the book offers lessons on how to manage risk, draw red lines, and preserve the legitimacy of public authority. Though the prospect of AI pushing beyond the limits of the law may seem remote, these measures are useful now – and will be essential if it ever does.

Part of the book’s introduction continues:

Though worries about the impact of new technology have accompanied many inventions, AI is unusual in that some of the starkest recent warnings have come from those most knowledgeable about the field. Many of these concerns are linked to ‘general’ or ‘strong’ AI, meaning the creation of a system that is capable of performing any intellectual task that a human could – and raising complex questions about the nature of consciousness and self-awareness in a non-biological entity. The possibility that such an entity might put its own priorities above those of humans is non-trivial, but this book focuses on the more immediate challenges raised by ‘narrow’ AI – meaning systems that can apply cognitive functions to specific tasks typically undertaken by a human. The book is organized around the following sets of problems: How should we understand the challenges to regulation posed by the technologies loosely described here as ‘AI systems’? What regulatory tools exist to deal with those challenges and what are their limitations? And what more is needed – rules, institutions, actors – to enable us to reap the benefits offered by AI while minimizing avoidable harm?

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)