The hope is that legal rules relating to AI technologies can frame their progress and limit the risks of abuse. This hope is tentative as technology seriously challenges the theory and practice of the law across legal traditions. The use of interdisciplinary and comparative methodologies makes clear that AI is currently impacting our understanding of the law. AI can be understood as a regulatory technology and confirms that AI can produce normative effects some of which may be contrary to public laws and regulations.

Although cooperation is widespread from amoebas to humans, the underlying mechanisms are still not well understood, which precludes a full understanding of how cooperation evolved, particularly the complex forms seen in both nonhuman and human primates. The diversity of forms and expressions of cooperation seen across species complicates this, a challenge that has been addressed empirically with studies of cooperation into the lab, where similar methods can be used across species, allowing us to determine what mechanisms are, or are not, shared across species. In the case of cooperation, these methods include joint-action tasks (such as the cooperative barpull) and economic games. With data from standardized lab tests, we can make predictions about how each species should respond in more species-typical, natural contexts. This process allows us to understand not only when mechanisms are shared that might not be obvious (i.e., because they manifest in different ways), but when similar outcomes are underpinned by dissimilar mechanisms. For instance, many primates coordinate, but results from economic games suggest that they do so using a variety of different mechanisms. In addition, we can use these results to identify situations in which cognitive abilities are present, but may not manifest, and to look for the environmental pressures that may inhibit their expression. For example, chimpanzees show evidence of many of the mechanisms necessary for trade and barter, but they do not manifest in all contexts, possibly due to the absence of third-party enforcement mechanisms. Ultimately, understanding cooperation requires recognizing the interplay between cognitive mechanisms and ecology, such that we identify not only how and in what contexts other primates cooperate, but also those situations in which primates do not cooperate, but might be expected to. In so doing, we also move closer to understanding both how humans cooperate, and why it sometimes breaks down so spectacularly.

In the Introduction, the editors describe the motivations and aims underlying the publication of the book against the background of the importance of corpus linguistics in current research and the associated methodological diversification. The didactic orientation of the book is outlined, as is its organization into four major parts and the contribution made by each chapter. Going beyond a summary of the contents, the editors voice some reflections on the state of the art in corpus linguistics and desiderata for future research. Finally, recommendations for further reading are listed and provided with comments.

North Korea has remained a contentious news topic in recent decades, yet the portrayal of the country and its actions changes drastically depending on news sources. This research utilizes content analysis and critical discourse analysis to show how the Voice of America and China Radio International thematically and linguistically discuss North Korea’s threats of a nuclear strike and subsequent test-firing of missiles in March 2016. The results reveal that these government-sponsored media outlets use similar linguistic techniques to assign or avoid blame in reference to North Korea – and to China and the United States. This research is part of a larger project on critical discourse studies of state-sponsored radio outlets.

Interstate dispute settlement authorities (IDSAs) require administration by means of so-called registries or secretariats. These entities are entrusted with tasks that help the respective IDSA in discharging its function as a judiciary. A comparative analysis of selected IDSAs’ Statutes and Rules of Procedure reveals that the tasks assigned to registries or secretariats are not uniform for all IDSAs. There rather exist two different modes of work, with one being exclusively administrative and the other being supplementary consultative. This chapter sheds light on the origins of the consultative mode of work in the IDSAs’ Statutes and Rules of Procedure. It is argued that adjudication through dispute settlement requires legal and non-legal information to be processed by some means of information management within the course of court proceedings. Pre-judicial proceedings encompass joint information management by the disputing parties before adjudication takes place. In this case, IDSAs’ registries’ and secretariats’ statutory rules prescribe only an administrative mode of work. In contrast, for IDSAs in which pre-judicial proceedings are not foreseen, information management needs to take place in the course of court proceedings and hence is conducted by the respective judiciary. This information management is carried out in cooperation with their secretariats or registries. In this case, IDSAs’ registries’ or secretariats’ statutory rules prescribe a consultative mode of work. A correlation between the existence of pre-judicial proceedings and the absence of respective registries’ or secretariats’ consultative modes of work is deduced from a comparison of eight different IDSAs. In conclusion, positive aspects of joint information management by the disputing parties are highlighted and best-practice examples for the integration of joint information management by disputing parties for ISDAs which do not foresee pre-judicial proceedings are indicated.

Where did our intelligence come from? That is, what evolutionary drivers caused such specialization in cognition among humans? Only by adopting a comparative approach, considering the brains and cognitive skills of other animal species, can we discover how, when, and even perhaps why human intellectual skills evolved. Here we apply a process of evolutionary reconstruction to ancestors we share with other species, from the earliest primates at 74 Ma (million years ago) to the relatively recent ancestor shared with chimpanzees. Doing so highlights the importance of both social and ecological (nutritional) pressures in evolving intellect. Complex sociality was supported by increased perception, learning, and memory skills, long before the development of any ability to understand other beings as causal agents with independent minds. The latter, we argue, was driven by a need to feed more efficiently in ancestors we share with all living great apes.