The Italian chapter of the ICON-S organized its second conference, which was held at UniFI (Università degli Studi Di Firenze), in Florence, from 22 to 23 November 2019.

This International Public Law conference topic was Le Nuove Tecnologie e il Futuro del Diritto Pubblico (New Technologies and the Future of Public Law). It was an overall success and well attended event organized in two plenary sessions and over 110 highly interesting panels attended by acknowledging scholars and skilled practitioners.

Artificial intelligence and its regulation stood at the center of the discussion.

Panel #78’s topic was ‘BOOK DISCUSSION. “IMPOSING REGULATION ON ADVANCED ALGORITHMS”, A PARLIAMENTARY PERSPECTIVE’. Prof. Nicola Lupo (LUISS, Rome) was the chair of the panel. The author of the book Imposing Regulation on Advanced Algorithms , Dr. Fotis Fitsilis (Hellenic Parliament), took the lead on the discussion of the topic, especially in its parliamentary dimension.

This book discusses the need and perhaps the urgency to regulate algorithms on which new technologies rely on. Its core chapters examine universally applicable patterns in administrative decisions and judicial rulings. The role of several stakeholders, particularly the involvement of parliament as major representative institutions in algorithmic regulation, was thoroughly discussed.

Since the topic is far from being exhausted, it provided useful insights to every attendee, namely Prof. Rui Tavares Lanceiro (University of Lisbon) and several interesting opportunities for cooperation became visible, e.g. in the areas of data first or AI-assisted legislative drafting.

The conference also enabled the interaction of Public Law with other scientific fields, namely the case of the Hellenic OCT Team, a new crowdsourcing initiative for the processing and analysis of parliamentary data. Sotiris Leventis, Franco Gatti and Dr. Fotis Fitsilis, three of its current 31 members attended this event. The Hellenic OCR Team features as a good parliamentary practice in the latest edition of IPU’s (Inter-Parliamentary Union) innovation tracker.

Read the full program of the second Italian chapter of the ICON-S here.