Hello, dear reader, and welcome to my last newsletter of 2022! I did not write as much as I hoped this year, something that I hope to change next year. Maybe I could write more about whatever I am working on at a given moment, and I am also thinking of inviting some guests to discuss specific topics. But, in the meantime, I will wrap up the year with a retrospective and some recommendations.
Overall, 2022 was quite intense for me. Things went well from a professional perspective, as I got to travel a bit, know more people, and get some work published. My thesis also seems to be moving forward: after some false starts, I think I finally have found a unifying theme that connects the seemingly disparate topics I’ve been working on. As for my personal life, it had intense highs and lows, but I must say that the overall balance is mainly positive.
To summarize all these developments, today’s newsletter covers three topics. First, I will talk briefly about my research outcomes this year. Then, I will mention some books I enjoyed reading and other things that might entertain you over the holiday break. And, before the usual end-of-newsletter otters, I will share a few calls for papers that might interest my academic readers.
Self-plug
Despite the mandatory Spike gif above, I find it very awkward to speak about my work. So, I will limit myself to presenting a list of what I did this year (with links whenever possible), but please feel free to contact me by email or elsewhere if you want more information.
First, I have to mention my current works in progress. Just yesterday, I uploaded to SSRN a new paper (written with Nicolas Petit). It is called ‘The EU AI Act: Between Product Safety and Fundamental Rights’, and we discuss the awkward fit between the Act’s product safety framework and its goals of protecting fundamental rights and offering comprehensive governance of AI technologies. After the break, I will share a second working paper (in which I am the sole author) called ‘What do we talk about when we talk about AI regulation?’. This paper engages in a meta-discourse about the aims and proper object of AI regulation as a field and a practice, and I will share more news about it in the next issue of this newsletter. Feel free to contact me if you want to read this one.
As for actual publications, I published one journal article on XAI and tax law in World Tax Journal (as part of a team led by Blazej Kuzniacki). I co-authored three book chapters in English: one on constitutional and human rights requirements for XAI (with the same team as the other XAI paper), one on the requirements imposed by EU data protection law on judicial automation (with Maria Dymitruk), and one on the procedural turn on EU social media regulation and its impacts on automated content moderation (with Andrea Loreggia, Juliano Maranhão, and Giovanni Sartor). I was also involved in two book chapters written in Portuguese: one on AI and competition law (with Juliano Maranhão and Miguel Garzeri Freire) and the other on data protection by design in Brazilian law (with Caio Lima and Juliano Maranhão).
This year, I also completed work on some forthcoming publications. One is a journal article on transparency in the AI Act, written with Madalina Busuioc and Deirdre Curtin, that will appear in European Law Open in early 2023. The other one is a GDPR commentary (edited by Indra Spiecker gen. Döhmann, Vagelis Papakonstantinou, Gerrit Hornung, and Paul de Hert), in which I co-authored with Juliano Maranhão and Giovanni Sartor comments on Article 4(5) and 25, as well as a discussion of the potential legal bases available for content personalization. This volume is currently expected for Q2 2023.
In addition to these publications, I also had some good opportunities to present works in progress and other spin-offs of my thesis research. At the REALaw Young Forum in Toledo, I had the opportunity to present a working paper on uncertainty, AI, and administrative decision-making (unfortunately, Covid forced me to present online, but it was a great event, and I hope to share more about the paper in the near future). The AI Act pre-print I linked above was presented at conferences in Dublin and Pisa, and the book chapter on XAI was presented at EXTRAAMAS to a computer science audience. Last but not least, I helped organize a two-day conference on surveillance, democracy, and the rule of law in June 2022, in which I also presented a paper on the uses of technical knowledge for assessing the legal ramifications of surveillance technology.
A final outlet for my work was blogging. Most of it took place in this newsletter, and recent subscribers (or casual readers) might want to browse the archive. But I was also involved in The Digital Constitutionalist, both in its editorial team and as a writer on topics of sci-fi and law, the digital state, and content moderation (this one with Renata Vaz Shimbo). This will not be the case in 2023, as I have decided to leave DigiCon for personal reasons. I will be involved in the final publications for the symposium on ‘Transparency in artificial intelligence systems?’, but after that, my participation on the blog will be that of a sympathetic reader. Nonetheless, I believe they have an interesting vision for creating a digital public square on matters of law & tech, and you should follow their work.
Some nice things for the break
Now that I have gotten the promotion part out of the way, I would like to share some of the things I enjoyed this year. Unfortunately, I won’t have much to offer in musical terms: I did listen to a lot of music this year, but my Spotify Wrapped was basically a monoculture (that said, you should listen to Sparks anyway). But I can suggest some stuff when it comes to books, TV shows, and games.
As my Goodreads profile reminds me, I have read way less fiction this year than I am used to. My go-to page-turner this year was Anne Currie’s Panopticon series, which I found both entertaining and insightful in how it engages issues such as climate change, virtual reality, and AI. Reversing time’s arrow, Laurent Binet’s Civilizations is an interesting exercise of alternate history, in which Atahualpa crosses the Atlantic and exploits the political turmoil of 16th-Century Europe to great effect. Last but not least, Paulina Chiziane’s Niketche: Uma História de Poligamia (available in English as Niketche: A Story of Polygamy) is a slow-burning but engrossing tale about the subjection of women in modern Mozambique.
Regarding non-fiction, my reading list was mostly dominated by niche things related to my thesis, some of which I mentioned in previous issues. For those of you who are planning to adopt a dog at some point, The Genius of Dogs, by Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods, was an informative read on what our canine companions can (and cannot) do and how to support them. Howard W French’s Born In Blackness tells the harrowing history of the Atlantic slave trade and how it deeply influenced societies in the Americas, Europe, and beyond. And David Edgerton’s The Shock of the Old provides a useful reminder that, as much as our narratives often focus on disruption, many of the technologies that shape our lives are in fact far from the bleeding edge of innovation.
Moving on to TV shows, I probably have spoken too much about Andor and Strange New Worlds in previous issues already (short version: watch them even if you are not much of a Star Wars/Star Trek person, respectively). So I’ll suggest three other shows. I laughed quite a bit with Hulu’s Reboot, though I must admit that I am biased in favour of anything featuring Rachel Bloom. For those of you who are into reality shows (I am not, for the most part), the latest season of Blown Away on Netflix had nice artists and some challenging themes for glassblowing. And, to go back to sci-fi, I liked Amazon’s take on The Peripheral, even though (or maybe because) I never got into William Gibson’s extra-Twitter writing.
Finally, I also have three gaming suggestions. Return to Monkey Island is a beautiful game and a fair tribute to the previous games in the series, though I was not too fond of the endings. Football Manager 2023 continues the usual approach of incremental changes but with a richer tactical game than last year and many more possibilities for using data. And Sunless Skies is a game with simple mechanics and a fascinating world in which you can spend dozens of hours and still come back for more.
Opportunities for 2023
Before we leave, I would like to call your attention to a few open calls for papers. Those more oriented towards law scholarship ask for the submission of abstracts (in some cases followed by the submission of a full paper):
Edinburgh Postgraduate Law Conference (30-31 May 2023) on "Law in the 21st Century: Challenges and Adaptations", deadline for abstracts 1 January.
Young Digital Law (Vienna, 5-7 July 2023) on "Bias in Law-Making - How Assumptions about Technology, Trustworthiness, and Human Agency underpin European Digital Law", deadline for abstracts 8 January.
28th Annual BILETA Conference (Amsterdam, 13-14 April 2023) on "Cyberlaw: Finally getting its Act(s) together?", deadline for abstracts 10 January.
Interdisciplinary Public Procurement PhD Forum 2023 (University, 16 May 2023), deadline for abstracts 1 February.
6th Young European Law Scholars Conference (Maastricht, 1-2 June 2023) on ‘The Future of EU Fundamental Rights’, deadline for abstracts 31 January. One of the topics they list is "EU fundamental rights in selected policy areas (e.g. the digital sphere, migration, criminal cooperation etc.)".
Those with a stronger computer science component usually ask for full papers by the submission deadline:
19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law - ICAIL 2023 (Braga, 19-23 June 2023), deadline for full papers 1 February
ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency - FAccT 2023 (Chicago, 12-15 June) , deadline for full papers 6 February (with a deadline for abstracts on 31 January).
Opportunities at the EUI
If you are planning to pursue a PhD in law, you might also want to take a look at the EUI PhD in Law, which accepts applications until 31 January. All PhD researchers here receive a stipend, which depends on the grant agency that funds your studies. For most EU citizens, this is your country of nationality, and some non-EU countries (such as the US, Italy, or China) are funded by Italian grants.
What if, like me, you come from a country not covered by such an agreement? Every year, the EUI can offer one Hans Kelsen scholarship to fund the studies of somebody not covered by any other grant agency. The EUI does not accept self-funded students, but it accepts applications funded by third parties in certain cases. My grant, for example, is funded by Fundación Carolina (which, unfortunately, no longer funds new EUI researchers), and students interested in competitiveness, innovation, and technology may apply for one of the new ASPIRE scholarships.
If you are a subscriber of this newsletter and are interested in applying to the PhD in Law at the EUI (even if not in my speciality topics), feel free to contact me with any questions.
And, if you are looking for a job rather than a PhD, there are various open positions at the EUI right now. Some of them are research fellowships (mostly at a post-doctoral level), others are research assistantships for people without a PhD, but we even have some professorial positions open at the School of Transnational Governance. Check them out!
Finally, the otters
Have a happy end-of-year break! And, if you are not subscribed to this newsletter, please consider doing so: