Faro and Lettieri: “Law and Computational Social Science”: Special issue of Rivista “Informatica e diritto”

Dr. Sebastiano Faro of ITTIG-CNR and Dr. Nicola Lettieri of ISFOL, University of Sannio, Benevento, and University of Salerno, have edited the new issue of Rivista Informatica e diritto, a special issue on the theme of “Law and Computational Social Science”.

Click here for abstracts of articles in Italian and English.

Here are the contents, with links to abstracts:

• Sebastiano Faro, Nicola Lettieri: Walking Finelines Between Law and Computational Social Science
• Orlando Roselli: The Ever Changing Legal Dimension and the Controversial Notions of Law and Science
• Domenico Parisi: Robotic Societies and Law: A Plea for a Robotic and Simulation Science of Legal Phenomena
• Bruce Edmonds: What Social Simulation Might Tell Us about How Law Works
• Klaus G. Troitzsch: Legislation, Regulatory Impact Assessment and Simulation
• Cristiano Castelfranchi: Cognitivizing “Norms”. Norm Internalization and Processing
• Federico Cecconi, Giulia Andrighetto, Rosaria Conte: How Social Norms Can Make the World More Regular and Better
• Pietro Terna: Learning Agents and Decisions: New Perspectives
• Nicola Lettieri, Domenico Parisi: Exploring the Effects of Sanctions on Damaging Actions Through Artificial Societies: A Simulation Model
• Luigi Bonaventura, Andrea Consoli: Priorities for Backlog of Criminal Cases Pending in Courts: A Computational Agent-based Model
• Fabrizio Caccavale: Perspectives of the Computational Approach as a Method for Criminological Research
• Federico Cecconi: Simulating Crime: Models, Methods, Tools
• Valentina Punzo: Agent-based Approach to Crime and Criminal Justice Policy Analysis
• Nicolas S. Malleson, Andrew J. Evans, Alison J. Heppenstall, Linda M. See: The Leeds Burglary Simulator
• Migle Laukyte: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Multi-agent Systems: Bridging the Gap between Law and Computer Science
• Deborah De Felice, Giovanni Giuffrida, Giuseppe Giura, Vilhelm Verendel, Calogero G. Zarba: Information Extraction and Social Network Analysis of Criminal Sentences. A Sociological and Computational Approach
• Nicola Lettieri, Delfina Malandrino, Raffaele Spinelli: Text and (Social) Network Analysis as Investigative Tools: A Case Study
• Guglielmo Feis: Network Analysis Formalism and the Construction of a Traceability System for Payments. A Sketch of Its Legal and Sociological Aspects
• Tamara Bellone, Francesco Fiermonte, Chiara Porporato: From “Free Information” to Its (Geo)referencing and Analisys: The ‘Costs’ of Open Source
• Guido Migliaccio: Computational Sciences, Business Management, Accounting and Law: Potential Intersections
• Ernesto Fabiani: Law and Computational Social Science: Brief Notes of a Civil Procedure Law Scholar

Call for Papers: AICOL 2013: Workshop on AI Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems

A call for papers — with abstract submission deadline of 28 February 2013 and full paper submission deadline of 15 May 2013 — has been issued for AICOL 2013: Workshop on AI Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems, to be held at a date to be determined, between 21 and 27 July 2013, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

The workshop is being collocated with XXVI. World Congress of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy.

Papers for AICOL 2013 are invited on the following topics:

• Law and Science
• Knowledge Management
• Law and Cognitive Science
• Cognitive schemas
• Law and Complexity Theory
• Law and Robotics
• Complex Systems
• Law and Mathematics
• Legal Theory
• Legal Graphic Representation
• Legal Culture
• Game Theory
• Computer Ethics
• Formalization of Legal Systems and Norms
• Artificial Societies
• Rules and Standards
• Argumentative Frameworks
• Agreement technologies
• Legal Ontologies
• Electronic Institutions
• Governance
• Legal Concepts
• Legal Information Retrieval
• Legal Thesauri
• Online Dispute Resolution
• Taxonomies
• Trends in e-Discovery, e-Courts, e-Administration
• Natural Language Processing (NLP)
• Legal Knowledge Acquisition
• Users’ studies
• Legal Knowledge Representation

For more details, please see the call.

HT Professor Dr. Monica Palmirani

Gros et al. on Ethics and Authority Sharing for Autonomous Armed Robots

Florian Gros and Catherine Tessier of ONERA, and Thierry Pichevin of CREC, Ecoles de Saint-Cyr Coetquidan, presented a paper entitled Ethics and Authority Sharing for Autonomous Armed Robots (scroll down), at RDA2 2012: the First Workshop on Rights and Duties of Autonomous Agents, held 28 August 2012 in Montpellier, France.

Click here for slides of the presentation.

Here is the abstract:

The goal of this paper is to review several ethical questions that are relevant to the use of autonomous armed robots and to authority sharing between such robots and the human operator. First, we discern the commonly confused meanings of morality and ethics. We continue by proposing leads to answer some of the most common ethical questions raised by literature, namely the autonomy, responsibility and moral status of autonomous robots, as well as their ability to reason ethically. We then present the possible advantages that authority sharing with the operator could provide with respect to these questions.

The principal ethical rules addressed in the paper are the Laws of War and related legal rules.

Click here for the complete proceedings of RDA2 2012: the First Workshop on Rights and Duties of Autonomous Agents.

Click here for abstracts and slides of presentations at RDA2 2012: the First Workshop on Rights and Duties of Autonomous Agents.

Stanford CIS Panel: Artificial Intelligence: A Legal Perspective

A panel on Artificial Intelligence: A Legal Perspective, was held 27 October 2011, at Stanford Law School, Stanford, California, USA. Click here for video of the panel.

The panel discussed many issues respecting artificial intelligence and law, including the legal agency and liability of AIs.

The panelists were Associate Dean Mary-Anne Williams of the University of Technology, Sydney Faculty of Engineering and IT; Professor Dr. Ian Kerr of the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law; Professor John O. McGinnis of the Northwestern University School of Law; and Professor Lawrence Solum of the Georgetown University Law Center. The moderator was Ryan Calo of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.

The panel was sponsored by the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.

The panel was a follow-up event to Stanford Law School’s 2009 panel entitled Legal Challenges in an Age of Robotics (click here for video).

Kahana on The Case for Robot Personal Liability: Part II – Iterative Liability

Eran Kahana, Esq., of CodeX: The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, and DataCard Corporation has posted The Case for Robot Personal Liability: Part II – Iterative Liability, at The CodeX Blog.

The post discusses legal liability “of cyber and cybernetic entities building more sophisticated AI iterations of themselves,” and “the concept of ‘iterative liability,’” meaning the “liability standards that propagate into and within each new entity version.”

Click here for Part I of this series of posts.

New on VoxPopuLII: Calo on Open Robotics

Ryan Calo, Esq., of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, has posted Open Robotics, on the VoxPopuLII Blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School.

In this post, Mr. Calo explores the transformative potential of robots, and how legal liability arising from robot conduct could inhibit the socially beneficial development of robot technology — particularly robotics developed according to an “open” and “generative” model. Mr. Calo offers a proposal for limiting liability of manufacturers of “open” robots, analogous to liability limitations introduced in order to benefit other transformative industries and technologies, such as aviation and the Internet.

This post will be of interest to those in the robotics, artificial intelligence, and open technology communities, as well as to ethicists, lawyers, and policy makers.

Call for Papers: AICOL 2011

A call for papers — with submission deadline of 16 May 2011 — has been issued for AICOL 2011: The Third Workshop on AI Approaches to the Complexity of Law, to be held 16 August 2011 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

The workshop is to be held in conjunction with IVR 2011: XXV. World Congress of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy.

Papers for AICOL 2011 are invited on the following topics:

• Law and Science
• Law and Cognitive Science
• Law and Complexity Theory
• Complex Systems
• Legal Theory
• Legal Culture
• Computer Ethics
• Artificial Societies
• Argumentative Frameworks
• Legal Ontologies
• Legal Concepts
• Legal Thesauri
• Taxonomies
• Natural Language Processing (NLP)
• Legal Knowledge Acquisition
• Legal Knowledge Representation
• Knowledge Management
• Cognitive schemas
• Law and Robotics
• Law and Mathematics
• Legal Graphic Representation
• Game Theory
• Formalization of Legal Systems and Norms
• Rules and Standards
• Agreement technologies
• Electronic Institutions
• Legal Information Retrieval
• Online Dispute Resolution
• Trends in e-Discovery, e-Courts, e-Administration
• Users’ studies

HT Professor Dr. Monica Palmirani.

Williams & Calo on Robots & Law

Professor Dr. Mary-Anne Williams of the University of Technology, Sydney Innovation & Enterprise Research Laboratory and CodeX: The Stanford Center for Computers and Law, and Ryan Calo, Esq. of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, discuss robots and the law, on The Week in Law Webcast for 17 July 2010 (TWiL 69: Do Lawyers Dream of Electric Sheep?).

The Webcast hosts are attorneys Denise Howell and Evan Brown.

The discussion addresses legal information processing by robots, and robots’ capability of playing roles in legal institutions, as well as a range of other legal, ethical, and psychological issues respecting robotics.

Hallevy on The Criminal Liability of Artificial Intelligence Entities

Dr. Gabriel Hallevy of the Ono Academic College Faculty of Law has posted The Criminal Liability of Artificial Intelligence Entities (2010). Here is a summary:

This article attempts to work out a legal solution to the problem of the criminal liability of AI entities. At the outset, a definition of an AI entity will be presented. Based on that definition, this article will then propose and introduce three models of AI entity criminal liability: the perpetration-by-another liability model, the natural-probable-consequence liability model, and the direct liability model.

These three models might be applied separately, but in many situations, a coordinated combination of them (all or some of them) is required in order to complete the legal structure of criminal liability. Once we examine the possibility of legally imposing criminal liability on AI entities, then the question of punishment must be addressed. How can an AI entity serve a sentence of imprisonment? How can death penalty be imposed on an AI entity? How can probation, a pecuniary fine, etc. be imposed on an AI entity? Consequently, it is necessary to formulate viable forms of punishment in order to impose criminal liability practically on AI entities. [footnotes omitted]

Call for Papers: ECAP 2010 / ECAP 10

A call for papers, with extended submission deadline of 7 May 2010 7 April 2010, has been issued for ECAP 2010 / ECAP 10: The 8th European Conference on Computing and Philosophy, to be held 4-6 October 2010, at Technische Universität München, in Munich, Germany.

Papers are invited on the following topics, a number of which include legal informatics or legal communication issues:

• Information and Knowledge Processing (Distributed Processing, Emergent Properties, Formal Ontology, Network Structures, etc)
• Philosophy of Computer Science
• Robotics, AI, and Ambient Intelligence
• Human-Machine Interaction and Explanation Capabilities
• Philosophy of Information Technology
• Neurocomputing and the Problem of Consciousness
• Computational Linguistics
• Computer-based Learning and Teaching Strategies and Resources
• The Impact of Distance Learning on the Teaching of Philosophy and Computing
• IT, Cultural Diversity and Technoscience Studies
• Information and Computing Ethics: Roboethics
• Biocomputing, Artificial Life, Systems Biology
• Electronic Art
• Complexity and Emergency
• Imaging and Knowledge
• New Models of Logic Software
• Models & Simulations Epistemology
• Synthetic emotions
• Computer & Gender Studies

For more information, please see the call for papers.

HT @WikiCFP.