Third meeting of the School of Generative AI and Law – Lectures on Human Rights and AI

We would like to invite you to the third meeting of the Generative AI and Law School, which will take place on Thursday, 30 November 2023, at 17.00 in the Red Lecture Hall of the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana, Poljanski nasip 2. Registration for all participants will take place in front of the lecture hall from 16.30 to 17.00.

The School, which is under the honorary patronage of the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Dr Nataša Pirc Musar, will focus this week on human rights concerns in the use of artificial intelligence. You can look forward to interesting and informative lectures by three renowned experts in the field and a roundtable discussion on AI in practice:

17.00 – 17.45 Human Rights and AI

Prof. Dr. Vasilka Sancin is Professor of International Law, Chair of the Department of International Law and Director of the Institute of International Law and International Relations at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana. She is currently a member of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council (2022-2025), and previously (2019-2022) she was a member and Vice-Chair of the UN Human Rights Committee and its Special Rapporteur on the follow-up process to the Concluding Observations. She is, among others, an ad hoc judge at the European Court of Human Rights; an arbitrator and member of the Bureau of the OSCE Conciliation and Arbitration Tribunals; and President of the International Law Association for Slovenia. In the years 2021-2024, she is leading a basic research project entitled The Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Light of the Negative and Positive Obligations of the State to Guarantee the Right to Life (J5-3107), co-funded by the Public Agency for Research and Innovation of the Republic of Slovenia.

While acknowledging the undoubted benefits of AI for humanity, the lecture also aims to highlight the dangers, for example, that AI can strengthen authoritarian governance, lead lethal autonomous weapons, serve as a tool for social control, surveillance and censorship, including mass surveillance of public spaces, infringe on privacy, reinforce discrimination and threaten other fundamental human rights.The lecture will be presented in the context of the European Research and Innovation Council (ERC), which is organised by the European Commission and the European Commission. Therefore, a key imperative for any development and regulation of AI must be that it must be based on the realisation of fundamental human rights. This lecture will present the various dilemmas that arise in the pursuit of this objective through a consideration of individual human rights in the light of the use of AI.

17.45 – 18.30 Generative AI through the prism of personal data protection

Dr. Pika Šarf is an employee of the Information Commissioner’s Office, where she works on international cooperation and oversight. She is also a researcher at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, where her research focuses on topics at the intersection of law and technology, in particular the protection of personal data and the exercise of other rights in the digital world.

The lecture will shed light on some of the key problems that generative artificial intelligence poses for the protection of personal data: what is personal data and when is it permissible to process it? What rights do individuals have on the other hand? What are the fundamental principles underpinning the protection of personal data and how do they cope with the challenges of the AI era?

18.45 – 19.30 Data Governance

Jeni Tennison is an expert on data, from technology to governance, strategy and public policy. She is the founder of Connected by data, a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow and an Associate Fellow at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy. Jeni was Executive Director of the Open Data Institute (ODI), where she held senior management positions for nine years. There she developed and led ODI’s approach to topics such as open data, data governance, data portability and data institutions, and led research, development and consultancy in sectors ranging from health and climate to agriculture and engineering.

19.30 – 20.30 AI in practice roundtable

The moderator of the roundtable will be Dr Jelena Burnik, Head of International Oversight at the Information Commissioner’s Office. Among the guests will be prominent experts: dr Maja Bogataj Jančič from the ODIPI Institute, which deals with open data and intellectual property; Boštjan Špetič from Outbrain; Ursula Lavrenčič, representative of KOBI; Uroš Čop from Senica Law Firm; and Rok Kocjančič, fourth year student at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana.

The event focuses on a thorough understanding and discussion of respect for human rights in the context of artificial intelligence, which represents a key challenge in the modern era of technological progress.

You are cordially invited!