Liability And Emerging Digital Technologies : An EU Perspective

Emerging digital technologies (EDTs), e.g. Internet of Things and of Services (IoT/IoS), Artificial Intelligence (AI), advanced robotics and autonomous vehicles (AV), can lead to fundamental discoveries, opening up new possibilities, and significantly improving the lives of many – in particular by bringing major benefits to our society and economy through better healthcare, more efficient public administration, stronger democratic processes, safer transport, a more competitive industry and sustainable farming. However, as smart machines develop in a way that makes them pursue their tasks with diverse degrees of autonomy, their new and enhanced potential brings in risks – or increases the existing ones – for both those who offer them and those who use them. This scenario raises challenges for regulators and policymakers that have to face the ontological difficulty of foreseeing and possibly controlling the impact of EDTs on economy and society, to make sure that they are human-centric, ethical, explainable, sustainable and respectful of fundamental rights and values.Against this background, the paper addresses the adequacy and completeness of liability regimes in the face of new challenges raised by the use of EDTs by identifying the normative foundations on which a liability regime for new technologies should be built on. In doing this it focuses on the current European liability regime and seeks first to ascertain whether it is fit for the new digital environment and, second, to envisage possible measures to face the new reality balancing the need to minimize the risks deriving from the use of EDTs with the need to capitalize on the benefits of innovation