The Socio-Legal Relevance of Artificial Intelligence (report)

Stefan Larsson

Abstract

The report draws on socio-legal theory in relation to growing concerns over fairness, accountability and transparency of societally applied artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The purpose is to contribute to a broad socio-legal orientation by describing legal and normative challenges posed by applied AI. To do so, the article first analyses a set of problematic cases, e.g. image recognition based on gender-biased data-bases. It then presents seven aspects of transparency that may complement notions of explainable AI within computer scientific AI-research. The article finally discusses the normative mirroring effect of using human values and societal structures as training data for learning technologies and concludes by arguing for the need for a multidisciplinary approach in AI research, development and governance.

Details

Authors	Stefan Larsson
Organisations	Real Estate Science Department of Technology and Society
Research areas and keywords	Subject classification (UKÄ) – MANDATORY Computer Science Law and Society Keywords Socio-legal relevance of AI, Transparency in AI, Sociology of law, Technology and society, Fairness in AI, Accountability in AI, The normative mirroring effect

Original language	Swedish
Place of Publication	Stockholm
Publisher	AI Sustainability Center
Number of pages	40
Publication status	Published - 2019 Dec 3
Publication category	Research
Event	General Insights - AI, transparency & the legal implications - Lindholmen Science Park, Göteborg, Sweden Duration: 2019 Dec 3 → 2019 Dec 3 https://www.chalmers.se/en/centres/chair/events/Pages/General-Insights---AI,-transparency-and-the-legal-implications.aspx

Bibliographic note

Stefan Larsson is a lawyer (LLM) and Associate Professor in Techno- logy and Social Change at Lund University, Department of Technology and Society. He holds a PhD in Sociology of Law as well as a PhD in Spatial Planning. In addition, Dr. Larsson is a senior researcher and head of the Digital Society program at the Swedish think tank Fores and scientific advisor for the Swedish Consumer Agency as well as the AI Sustainability Center. His research focuses on issues of trust and transparency on dig- ital, data-driven markets, and the socio-legal impact of autonomous and AI-driven technologies.