AI Colloquium with Giovanni Sartor (European University Institute)

Utrecht University’s AI Colloquium will this year be organized by the focus area Human-centered Artificial Intelligence. We are proud to present the second speaker: Giovanni Sartor, Professor in legal informatics at the University of Bologna and professor in Legal informatics and Legal Theory at the European University Institute. He will share his thoughts and on "The Claudette System - Empowering Consumers Through AI".

The Claudette System

CLAUDETTE – “automated CLAUse DETectEr” – is an interdisciplinary research project hosted at the Law Department of the European University Institute, in cooperation with  University of Bologna and University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. The research objective is to test to what extent is it possible to automate reading and legal assessment of online consumer contracts and privacy policies, to evaluate their compliance with EU’s unfair contractual terms law and personal data protection law (GDPR), using machine learning and grammar-based approaches.

The idea arose out of bewilderment. Having read dozens of terms of service and of privacy policies of online platforms, we came to the conclusion that despite substantive law in place, and despite enforcers’ competence for abstract control, providers of online services still tend to use unfair and unlawful clauses in these documents. Hence, the idea to automate parts of enforcement process by delegating certain tasks to machines. On one hand, we believe that relying on automation can increase quality and effectiveness of legal work of enforcers. On the other, we want to empower consumers themselves, by giving them tools to quickly assess whether what they agree to online is fair and/or lawful.

About Giovanni Sartor

Giovanni Sartor is currently Principal Investigator for the ERC (Europen Research Council) Advanced project COMPULAW, started on 1 November 2019. He is part-time professor in legal informatics at the University of Bologna and part-time professor in Legal informatics and Legal Theory at the European University Institute. He obtained a Ph.D. at the EUI, researcher at the Italian National Council of Research (ITTIG, Florence), chair in Jurisprudence at Queen’s University of Belfast, and was Marie-Curie professor at the EUI. He has been President of the International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law. He has published widely on artificial intelligence and law, computational logic, legal theory/philosophy, and computer law.

Human-centered Artificial Intelligence

The AI Colloquium is organized within Utrecht University focus area Human-centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). HAI bundles the various AI-activities undertaken at Utrecht University. AI in Utrecht has a unique interdisciplinary profile that pervades various departments, including computer science, philosophy, linguistics and psychology.