The Institute at the Annual International Conference On the Issue of the Rule of Law: Enforcement Inside and Beyond Russia

The Institute research staffers Kirill Molodyko and Maxim Karlyuk, having passed competitive selection, took part in the annual joint conference of the Higher School of Economics and Helsinki University over November 20-21 at Helsinki for "Rule of Law Revisited: Applying Law in Russia and Beyond".

Kirill Molodyko in his speech focused on the problem of sanctions and countermeasures as a multifaceted political, economic and legal phenomenon in international relations. A significant part of the speech was devoted to statistics on the application of sanctions by various actors, as well as evaluation of their effectiveness (the degree of achievement of the set goals). Thus, the hypothesis that there is in general a relation between the magnitude of the objectives of sanctions and their effectiveness is empirically confirmed. On the basis of a detailed analysis of the voting in the UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly for resolutions condemning sanctions as a mechanism in an abstract manner, without being tied to a specific state - as they address, Kirill demonstrated that such resolutions are not supported by economically developed countries. However, non-European states relating to developing countries usually vote for such resolutions. The report also considered the actual practice of handling cases of personal sanctions in the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the European Court of Human Rights. In the concluding part of the speech, the speaker dwelled on the regulation of sanctions by the World Trade Organisation.

Maxim Karliuk spoke about possible ways of developing the legal regulation of artificial intelligence. Despite the fact that these technologies bring measurable positive results in various areas of life, they also carry risks that are more difficult to measure. This is due to the fact that systems using artificial intelligence technologies are becoming increasingly autonomous in terms of the complexity of tasks that they can perform, their potential impact on the world around them and the diminishing ability of a person to understand, predict or control them. The speaker defined one of the key issues as that of legal responsibility and its delineation between the creators, owners and systems operators where artificial intelligence is concerned. The existing legal constructions and their shortcomings with regard to artificial intelligence were analyzed. Also, the possibility of serious consequences due to directly autonomous agents, which can act independently of creators or operators, was considered.