Rome, 30 April. (Adnkronos/Labitalia) – The evolution of artificial intelligence goes hand in hand with the constant commitment of the legislator in trying to establish adequate rules. In fact, there are ever more cases in which it is difficult to discern between choices attributable to the will of the person-programmer or to the AI systems implemented. Next May 7th Stefano Preziosi, professor of criminal law at the Department of Law of the University of Rome Tor Vergata and scientific coordinator of the new Research Center on Artificial Intelligence and Law (Criad) https://giurisprudenza.uniroma2.it /criad/ of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, is among the protagonists of the conference entitled ‘Artificial intelligence and human responsibility. A space not free from law. New European discipline and internal regulation’, organized by the Department of Law – Criad and the Rome Bar Association, at the Cassa Forense in Rome in via Ennio Quirino Visconti 8, which focuses on the relationship between law and artificial intelligence.
AI systems are those that by analogy can be defined as complex organizations capable of producing autonomous decisions, i.e. not completely governed or governable by humans. A crucial aspect in the field of law is that the more the self-learning capacity of artificial intelligence increases – through machine learning tools – the greater the precautions necessary in the future will be in attributing responsibility to the programmers of the original software.
“The fundamental premise – claims Preziosi – is that any regulation of the matter must now accept that it is no longer possible to defend the exclusivity of man’s dominion over the machine. From this perspective, nothing excludes the possibility of thinking about AI systems also in terms of legal attribution centers and legal persons. The definition of permitted risk areas within the framework of precise regulatory limits will become fundamental for the future. It therefore becomes necessary to create an ‘AI Statute’ to define an area of permitted risk, considering that it is not (always) possible to establish a priori the final decision that the system will take, as the latter depends on highly adaptive behavior of the car”.
The Criad (Research Center on Artificial Intelligence and Law) is the departmental research center established at the beginning of 2024 on the proposal of fourteen full professors of the Department of Law of Rome Tor Vergata. Currently the members of the scientific council of the Center are the teachers Carlo Bonzano, Maria Floriana Cursi, Roberto Fiori, Enrico Gabrielli, Giovanni Guzzetta, Raffaele Lener, Venerando Marano, Francesco Saverio Marini, Donatella Morana, Andrea Panzarola, Stefano Preziosi, Giuseppe Santoni, Adolfo Scalfati, Alberto Zito.
Preziosi is its scientific coordinator: “The breadth of the Council guarantees expertise and representation of practically all branches of law that necessarily come into play with AI: firstly because the systems that make use of it inevitably generate litigation; secondly because the dispute in question cannot always be easily resolved on the basis of consolidated principles”.
“There is also – specifies the jurist Preziosi – a regulatory problem: should the law regulate AI systems? The issue is very delicate because it has to do with the possibility of regulating scientific development. Many see attempts to establish legal rules as a snare to progress, while others hope for the intervention of a third-party regulator, other than the large data management and search engine (big data) companies”.
“There are then political-legal implications: the stability of democratic systems in the face of the possible construction/manipulation of consensus with generative AI as well as the potential substitutive nature of AI with respect to the political decision-maker. I think the fears and praise for this artificial intelligence system are long overdue.”
“It is more interesting – concludes the jurist – a philosophical reflection, in which we ask ourselves what the destiny of man could be in the new technological dimension: following the path of the history of ideas in the light of this phenomenological, existential, scientific, in which the centrality of the human being can enter into crisis, in the idea perhaps that there is something better than human thought and action, capable of avoiding (according to this idea) many inconveniences, and even many disasters such as famines, wars and more”.
“The moment is propitious – comments Preziosi – the regulation on AI has recently been approved by the European Parliament and in the coming months it should be launched after the last formal passage by the European Commission”.
Even in a recent interview, the professor from Rome Tor Vergata delved into the reasoning on the regulations being studied at European level regarding this advanced technology, underlining that “The Council of the EU will have to complete the approval process in the next few months, after which the European Regulation on “artificial intelligence will be Union law” and as such applicable, even if national regulatory measures to implement this regulation will be required.
The new rules will impose compliance systems that will involve companies and bodies more generally, but also legal practitioners, who will be called upon to deal with these rules when applying them or providing consultancy. The foundations of various regulatory aspects will be laid: prohibited uses, controls, prognostic risk assessment, the reserve of humanity in algorithmic programming, the relationship with data management and the related individual guarantees and much more.
