This chapter explores the changes that AI brings about in corporate law and corporate governance, especially in terms of the challenges it poses for corporations. The law scholar Jan Lieder argues that whilst there is the potential to enhance the current system, there are also risks of destabilisation. Although algorithms are already being used in the board room, lawmakers should not consider legally recognizing e-persons as directors and managers. Rather, academia should evaluate the effects of AI on the corporate duties of boards and their liabilities. By critically examining three main topics, algorithms as directors, AI in a management board, and AI in a supervisory board, the author suggests the need for transparency in a company’s practices regarding AI for awareness-raising and the enhancement of overall algorithm governance, as well as the need for boards to report on their overall AI strategy and ethical guidelines relating to the responsibilities, competencies, and protective measures they established. Additionally, the author argues that a reporting obligation should require the boards to deal with questions of individual rights and explain how they relate to them.

This chapter by the law scholar Antje von Ungern-Sternberg focuses on the legality of discriminatory AI which is increasingly used to assess people (profiling). Intelligent algorithms – which are free of human prejudices and stereotypes – would prevent discriminatory decisions, or so the story goes. However, many studies show that the use of AI can lead to discriminatory outcomes. From a legal point of view, this raises the question whether the law as it stands prohibits objectionable forms of differential treatment and detrimental impact. In the legal literature dealing with automated profiling, some authors have suggested that we need a ‘right to reasonable inferences’, i.e. a certain methodology for AI algorithms affecting humans. von Ungern-Sternberg takes up this idea with respect to discriminatory AI and claims that such a right already exists in antidiscrimination law. She argues that the need to justify differential treatment and detrimental impact implies that profiling methods correspond to certain standards. It is now a major challenge for lawyers and data and computer scientists to develop and establish those methodological standards.

The chapter aims to serve as a conceptual sketch for the intricacies involved in autonomous algorithmic collusion, including the notion of concerted practices for cases that would otherwise elude the cartel prohibition. Stefan Thomas, a law scholar, starts by assessing how algorithms can influence competition in markets before dealing with the traditional criteria of distinction between explicit and tacit collusion, which might reveal a potential gap in the existing legal framework regarding algorithmic collusion. Finally, he analyses whether the existing cartel prohibition can be construed in a way that captures the phenomenon appropriately. This chapter shows how enforcement paradigms that hinge on descriptions of the inner sphere and conduct of human beings may collapse when applied to the effects precipitated by independent AI based computer agents.

In this chapter, the law scholar Ralf Poscher sets out to show how AI challenges the traditional understanding of the right to data protection and presents an outline of an alternative conception that better deals with emerging AI technologies. Firstly, Poscher explains how the traditional conceptualisation of data protection as an independent fundamental right on its own collides with AI’s technological development, given that AI systems do not provide the kind of transparency required by the traditional approach. Secondly, the author proposes an alternative model, a no-right thesis, which shifts the focus from data protection as an independent right to other existing fundamental rights, such as liberty and equality. He argues that this allows us to step back from the idea that each and every instance of personal data processing concerns a fundamental right. Instead, it is important to assess how an AI system ‘behaves’, what type of risks it generates, and which substantive fundamental rights are being affected.

National courts have generally embraced a multifold account for causation in virtually all Member States. However, the different national tort law systems structure the multi-stage accounts differently. National judges enforce competition law rules largely relying on their domestic laws of obligations. For this reason, this chapter examines the bundle of tort law and competition law that applies to establish causation in competition damages actions before national courts of England, Germany, France and Italy. These four jurisdictions were selected because of the size of their economies, the amount of litigation and the fact that they show four different, almost paradigmatic, approaches to causation.

I argue that none of the current explanations of why shareholders should be given voting powers are persuasive. I then explain the exercise of informal power through the exertion of influence.

I argue that none of the current explanations of why shareholders should be given voting powers are persuasive. I then explain the exercise of informal power through the exertion of influence.

I show that subjecting shareholders to fiduciary duties is not without precedent by drawing on the example of US and German law.