Law & Machine Learning

Description: the workshop proposal in “Law and Machine Learning” aims to contribute to the research on social and legal risks of the deployment of AI systems using machine learning based decisions. Today, algorithms have been infiltrating and governing every aspect of our lives as individuals and as a society. Specifically, Algorithmic Decision Systems (ADS) are involved in many social decisions. For instance, such systems are increasingly used to support decision-making in fields, such as child welfare, criminal justice, school assignment, teacher evaluation, fire risk assessment, homelessness prioritization, healthcare, Medicaid benefit, immigration decision systems or risk assessment, and predictive policing, among other things. Law enforcement agencies are increasingly using facial recognition, algorithmic predictive policing systems to forecast criminal activity and allocate police resources. However, these predictive systems challenge fundamental rights and guarantees of the criminal procedure. For several years, numerous studies have revealed, social risks of ML, especially the risks of opacity, bias, manipulation of information.

While it is only the starting point of the deployment of such systems, more interdisciplinary research is needed. Our purpose is to contribute to this new field which brings together legal researchers, mathematicians and computer scientists, by bridging the gap between the performance of algorithmic systems and legal standards. For instance, notions like “privacy” or “fairness” are formulated in law, as well as mathematical definitions in computer science. However, the meaning and the impact of such requirements are not necessarily identical. Besides, legal norms to regulate AI systems appear in certain national laws but have to be relevant and compatible with technical requirements. Furthermore, these standards must be checked by legal experts and regulators, which presupposes that AI systems are sufficiently meaningful and transparent. These issues emerge in different topics, such as privacy in data analysis and fairness in algorithmic decision-making. The topic will cover the research that denounces the risks and, above all, multidisciplinary research that proposes solutions, especially legal and technical solutions.