Driverless Cars, Artificial Intelligence and Ethics: How to Solve Liability Issues

Artificial Intelligence is currently at an experimental stage, but at the same time, its progress is rapid. A development of AI is expected in several fields from the military sector with killer-robots and Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) to non-military use of robots in a number of governmental functions. However, driverless cars are undoubtedly the most popularized utility of AI, such cars leading in theory to safer roads will have a significant impact on how vehicles are used and owned. Which criteria should determine ethical and liability rules for intelligent cars? Should the owner of the intelligent car be liable? Or it is anticipated that the degree of autonomy of cars and accordingly the level of instructions and education provided by other parties will determine the liability? These are core policy issues that emerged with the appearance of the first driverless cars.

About the Speaker

Dr. Antonios Kouroutakis is Assistant Professor at IE University in Madrid, Spain and he teaches Constitutional Law and the Regulation of New Technologies and Startups. Dr Kouroutakis has taught a variety of law courses and conducted research at the City University of Hong Kong, the Free University of Berlin, FVG Sao Paolo, and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Dr. Kouroutakis received a DPhil in Law from University of Oxford and an LLM from UCLA School of Law. Dr. Kouroutakis’ research interests lie mainly in the field of constitutional engineering, public law and regulation. In particular, Dr. Kouroutakis is interested in the concept of separation of powers, rule of law, emergency legislation, and the regulation of new technologies; he has published widely on these topics in international and peer reviewed journals, and his work has been cited in numerous reports.