Professors Mireille Hildebrandt (VUB, Brussels) and Catherine Régis (Université de Montréal – Mila, Canada) will present some of the major current questions around Law and Artificial Intelligence. How to bring AI applications under the rule of law, and what fundamental rights assessments must be put in place? Does the GDPR set the right tone and how can AI development be aligned with individual rights and freedoms, including rights to non-discrimination, privacy, due process and the presumption of innocence? Mireille Hildebrandt will focus on the concepts of robust AI (in terms of reliability and resilience) and robust law (in terms of the rule of law), and discuss how robust AI could support the rule of law and vice versa. She will also give an overview of future developments in the legal regulation of AI, and explore the role of ethical guidelines and charters, through their formalization process and their potential for legal developments.

In recent years, art and technology have been merging together. When thinking of art, it's typical to initially think of things like paintings, sculptures or photography. However, technological advancements have resulted in many artists utilizing technology in their work. Patricia Search is a professor in the Communication department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as well as the Director, Center for Global Communication and Design. George Grossman, attorney at Grossman & Associates, highlights that "the use of electronic databases in the legal profession will increase the number of research materials available to lawyers by providing access to a larger number of court opinions as well as access to other important references, such as statutory or regulatory material and legal comments about court decisions."

The book will consist of contributions based on some of Leiden University's SAILS research project's results and your contribution as a leading expert in this area. We invite contributions focusing on technological, legal, ethical, or social issues of the development and use of AI. Topics are not limited to those mentioned in the call for papers. This may concern best practices in regulating AI, in using AI in the legal domain, or any assessment frameworks for AI developments. All papers will be peer-reviewed by our program committee and other independent reviewers (where necessary) and will be published in an edited book with an ISBN.

A recent AI project correctly predicted the outcome of hundreds of European Court of Human Rights' cases in 4 out of 5 cases. I was asked whether this demonstrates we don't need lawyers anymore? I began to think this through and came to the view that the answer is probably not as many, but just better ones and this is why. As a profession generally, we are required to wade through, assimilate and process vast amounts of data. For years we have relied on teams of paralegals, assistants, associates and partners to do this work and provide grateful clients with the benefit of our learning interpretation and advice.