On 1 October 2019, Dean André Nollkaemper signed a collaboration agreement in the field of Meaningful Control of Autonomous Systems (MCAS). The signatories will cooperate on research relating to autonomous systems in society, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence. They are the Amsterdam Law School (UvA), the Informatics Institute (UvA), the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and the Centre for Work and Income (CWI).

Legal perspective

Key aspects of the collaboration will include the regulation of these autonomous systems and research on the legal and ethical principles they entail. The partnership will offer great opportunities for researchers at the Amsterdam Law School, especially in the areas of information law, digitisation of the legal system, judicial procedures, legal informatics and criminal law. The core team will consist of staff and stakeholders from each party. The Amsterdam Law School will fund two positions of 0.2 FTE each.

AI in the legal system

The goal for the coming year is to gather knowledge through 'use cases'. One of the cases that has been selected concerns the new generation of intelligent systems and AI algorithms in the legal system. Researchers will examine the extent to which legal data is biased, as well as how and whether objectivity can be achieved.