Wrapping up 2024
Personal reflections and some recommendations
Hello, dear reader, and welcome to another issue of AI, Law, and Otter Things! This will likely be the last issue of 2024, as we are now close to the end of an eventful year. Over the last 12 months, I wrapped up my PhD, started a new job in a new country (and branch of the law!), and had a lot of other personal and professional developments. 2024 has been a tough year for me, but one that was ultimately very rewarding. I will spare you from a blow-by-blow recollection, but today’s newsletter will be a bit more self-centred than usual.
More specifically, I will begin the newsletter with some thoughts on my initial steps in the field of cybersecurity. Then, I will share some links to my publicly accessible outputs from this year, followed by the usual recommendations and opportunities. Finally, of course, a cute (real!) otter to accompany the AI-generated depiction above.
Starting in a new field
As I write these words, I’ve started in my new position a month and a half ago. This means that, so far, a substantial part of my work has been dedicated to two things: (1) becoming acquainted with the field of cyber policy; (2) catching up with the backlog from my previous commitments. I am glad to report that, despite some mental health issues and the practical challenges of moving to a new country, I should wrap up the second item by the end of this calendar year, or close to that. The catching-up effort should take a little longer.
When I say “catching up”, I don’t want to imply I’m starting from nowhere. Despite the old—and sadly apt—joke that the “S” in AI/ML1 stands for security, cybersecurity concerns are pretty much unavoidable when one is discussing digital technologies. Other dimensions of cyber policy, such as debates on digital sovereignty and the global spread of EU digital law, have also featured in my work and this newsletter. And my background in computer science does help me quite a bit in learning about the legal ramifications some of the more arcane technologies. Even so, working in cyber policy means I have to become an expert in at least two things beyond my comfort zone.
First, there is the cyber part, as cybersecurity law can be a pretty specialized domain of technology law. In my previous hunting grounds—data protection and AI regulation—everybody was ready to pay lip service to the challenges and importance of security concerns. Yet in practice, discussions about these topics were usually left to some practical lawyers with a more technical bent. So, jumping into those debates requires me to become familiarized with a different scholarly jargon and culture.
Additionally, the policy part also requires me to broaden my horizons. In my PhD, I have focused on legal regulation of AI technologies. My work focused on the delegation of legal powers to establish requirements for AI technologies. Both AI and delegation of powers remain crucial in my work, but policy goes beyond the kind of instrument I was concerned with. It includes legal tools based on positive sanctions, such as investment regimes, which some scholars tend to distinguish from regulation stricto sensu.2 And it also includes a variety of non-legal instruments to shape behaviour, which can be more relevant than the black letter of the law (and its enforcement) for some purposes. So, I have also been seizing the opportunity to dive more deeply into the policy studies scholarship.
None of this is a problem. In fact, part of what drove me to apply for this post-doc position was the opportunity for developing those expertises. Even so, this experience has been a humbling reminder of the difference that mastery of a field makes. It takes me a lot longer than usual to read some things, as my mental map of the relevant scholarly discussions and concepts is not as sharp as it is when it comes to AI. And it will still be a bit longer before I have something interesting to add to those conversations. All in all, this is a fun experience, but also one that takes some effort. Accordingly, my posts in 2025 will likely feature a lot more half-baked thoughts ideas at an early stage of development.
My outputs in 2024
This year, I did not post as much as I expected in this newsletter. This is my 16th post of 2024, giving me an average of four posts a quarter instead of the forthnightly rhythm I had maintained before. Such a number does not surprise me, as this year I worked on two book-length manuscripts (my thesis and a project that will soon be published), plus a variety of other outputs. And, for the most part, I managed to do so while enjoying family life and cultivating hobbies, namely my painting and playing Warhammer 40k. Given that the vast majority of those outputs has been on topics that are likely to interest somebody who reads a newsletter titled AI, Law, and Otter Things, I hope you will put up with a bit of self-promotion.
In English
Marco Almada and Estela Lopes, ‘Participation in Privatised Digital Systems’ (SLSA Blog, 26 November 2024).
A brief blogpost synthesizing my work on the DigiPublicValues project, funded by a CIVICA grant, in which I focused on what “participation” means when public tasks are increasingly performed by digital systems developed and used by private actors. Estela’s perspective brings a valuable counterpoint to that work, probing many of its key assumptions.
Łukasz Górski and others, ‘Exploring Explainable AI in the Tax Domain’ [2024] Artificial Intelligence and Law forthcoming.
In this article, we collaborated with a team from the Buenos Aires municipal tax authorities to develop a prototype system, based on synthetic data, and evaluate whether and how XAI tools could provide authorities with the information they need to comply with disclosure requirements. The answer is largely “not really”, but some techniques are much more informative than others.
Marco Almada and Anca Radu, ‘The Brussels Side-Effect: How the AI Act Can Reduce the Global Reach of EU Policy’ (2024) 25 German Law Journal 646.
In this article, we argue that the AI Act is unlikely to have a Brussels Effect as strong as the one we have seen in the GDPR. If one looks at the conditions thought to be necessary and sufficient for the Effect, the Act will likely meet it only for some narrow domains. This is not to say it will have no influence at a global scale, given that the EU has other mechanisms to exert influence over national and international lawmaking. But, even so, the EU is more likely to spread the shape of its approach to AI governance than the normative commitments that supposedly underpin it.
Marco Almada, ‘Delegating the Law of Artificial Intelligence: A Procedural Account of Technology-Neutral Regulation’ (PhD in Law, European University Institute 2024).
In this thesis, I argue that we should examine technology-neutral regulation not as a property of how legal text is framed, but rather as a process of delegation of the power to determine the technical contents of the law. The thesis is not publicly available, but this interview outlines its core aspects. If you’d like to see more, please feel free to reach out, but you can always wait for the movie version book version that I will start pitching around early next year.
In Portuguese
Bernardo de Souza Dantas Fico and Marco Almada (eds), Efeito Bruxelas: Concepção, Processos e Influência Do Direito Da União Europeia (Maranhão & Menezes Advogados 2024).
In this short ebook, we provide a brief introduction to the EU legislative procedure and how that matters for actors in non-EU jurisdictions.
Marco Almada and Rafael Augusto Ferreira Zanatta, ‘Inteligência artificial, direito e pesquisa jurídica’ [2024] Revista USP 51.
A brief magazine article in which we discuss what is “legal research” (within and beyond academia) and how research practices in the legal domain have been affected by the diffusion of AI technologies.
Forthcoming (with no link available)
Marco Almada and Nicolas Petit, ‘The EU AI Act: Between the Rock of Product Safety and the Hard Place of Fundamental Rights’ (2025) 62 Common Market Law Review.
The final version of our AI Act paper is finally at hand. It should be published at the beginning of the year, and we believe it is a considerable improvement over the version that is currently available. Not only we updated the references in light of the approved text of the AI Act (and the secondary literature that followed), but we included a brief introduction to the regulation and streamlined the discussion of the three law & tech challenges we cover.
Marco Almada, Juliano Maranhão and Giovanni Sartor, ‘Competition in and through Artificial Intelligence’ in Pier Luigi Parcu, Maria Alessandra Rossi and Marco Botta (eds), Research Handbook on Competition and Technology (Edward Elgar Publishing 2025)
A brief overview of how technical aspects of AI are relevant not only for measuring competition within the markets for AI technologies but also in the downstream markets in which AI is used. While some of the specifics of the discussion have been overcome by events, I believe the core elements of the analysis have resisted so far. Check it out once the book is published!
Marco Almada and Anca Radu, ‘Brussels Effect’ in Austen Parrish, Cedric Ryngaert, and Danielle Ireland-Piper (eds), Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Extraterritoriality and the Law.
Anca Radu and Marco Almada, ‘AI Governance’ in Austen Parrish, Cedric Ryngaert, and Danielle Ireland-Piper (eds), Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Extraterritoriality and the Law.
Two encyclopedia entries exploring the relationship between topics we research on and extraterritoriality writ large.
Marco Almada, ‘The EU AI Act’ in Markus Furendal and Magnus Lundgren (eds), Handbook on the Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence
In this chapter, I come back to the topic of the AI Act’s potential influence as a global template, broadening my analysis to encompass other mechanisms beyond the unilateral economic influence offered by the Brussels Effect. A pre-print should be available soon.
Recommendations for the break
Since we are going into the winter break, I will save my “professional” reading recommendations until the first newsletter of 2025. Instead, I will recommend some fiction and non-fiction you might read (or otherwise engage with) over the next week(s).
If you have an interest in Warhammer 40,000, you might want to check out the Ultimate Guide just published by DK. Written by two of the greatest experts in the game and scenario, the book does an excellent job of presenting lots of information about the lore and its evolution, as well as gorgeous pictures of painted miniatures. If you liked a Warhammer computer game, found a book or some other fiction piece interesting, or simply like painting miniatures, this book can be a valuable resource. I am not entirely sure it works as a first contact with the fictional universe, but it is an excellent second point of reference for you to find out where to go next.
Still in the domain of sci-fi, I think any readers of a Trekkie persuasion would do well to watch the final season of Lower Decks, which remains a love letter to everything Star Trek. And, if you are looking for something to read, look no further than John Scalzi’s Redshirts, which begins in a somewhat similar vibe before going somewhere else entirely.
If you are too cool for Star Trek or sci-fi in general, you might find it worthwhile to give a chance to Iain M Banks’s Culture books. I did not really enjoy Consider Phlebas when I first read it, but gained a newfound appreciation for it after reading more of the series. The Player of Games might work better as an entry point, but I guess the one that moved me the most was, ultimately, Look to Windward.
Being married to a former Samuel Beckett scholar, I try to read at least one piece of this author’s oeuvre every year. For 2024, I went with Krapp’s Last Tape, which was a fascinating read. And, for a final suggestion mostly aimed at my non-Brazilian readers, check out the latest English translations of Machado de Assis, a staple of Brazilian literature. Both Dom Casmurro and The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas have received new versions lately.
Opportunities
Before you leave for the holidays, the 33rd European regional conference of the International Telecommunications Society has an open call for papers. Extended abstracts (800-1000 words) and proposals for panels are accepted until 20 December 2024, with the event taking place in 30 June and 1 July 2025.
SLSA 2025 has extended the deadline for its call to papers until 6 January 2025.
The Fourth Annual Cybersecurity Law and Policy Scholars Conference has also extended its submission deadline, until 3 January 2025.
Merel Noorman at the Tilburg Law School is hiring a PhD Researcher on Decentralising AI Governance. Applications for this 4-year position are open until 1 February 2025.
Ramses A. Wessel, Jonas Bornemann, and Viktor Szép at Groningen are hiring a PhD researcher on the Nexus Between External and Internal Security Threats or Informality in EU Migration and Foreign Relations Law.
King’s College London is hiring a Postdoctoral Research Associate (deadline 16 January 2025) and an Innovation Director (deadline 5 January 2025) at the Centre for Data Futures, as well as a Lecturer in Digital Law (deadline 6 January 2025).
Applications for the EUI PhD in law remain open until 31 January. Please do not hesitate in contacting me if you’d be interested in applying, especially if you are interested in digital law or come from a Global South country.
Finally, the otters
Thanks for your attention! Hope you found something interesting above, and please consider subscribing if that is the case:
Hope to see you early next year. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to email me if you’d like to engage with something I shared, or if there is a reading recommendation or opportunity you think I should post in a future issue. All the best for the next year!
“Machine learning”, in this case. I will leave my Marxist friends to evaluate whether the pun also applies for that other ML.
Not all, of course, as outlined by Koop and Lodge