Towards Identifying and closing Gaps in Assurance of autonomous Road vehicleS - a collection of Technical Notes Part 1

This report provides an introduction and overview of the Technical Topic Notes (TTNs) produced in the Towards Identifying and closing Gaps in Assurance of autonomous Road vehicleS (Tigars) project. These notes aim to support the development and evaluation of autonomous vehicles. Part 1 addresses: Assurance-overview and issues, Resilience and Safety Requirements, Open Systems Perspective and Formal Verification and Static Analysis of ML Systems. Part 2: Simulation and Dynamic Testing, Defence in Depth and Diversity, Security-Informed Safety Analysis, Standards and Guidelines

Reasonable AI and Other Creatures. What Role for AI Standards in Liability Litigation?

Standards play a vital role in supporting policies and legislation of the European Union. The regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) makes no exception as made clear by the AI Act proposal. Particularly, Articles 40 and 41 defer to harmonised standards and common specifications the concrete definition of safety and trustworthiness requirements, including risk management, data quality, transparency, human oversight, accuracy, robustness, and cybersecurity. Besides, other types of standards and professional norms are also relevant to the governance of AI. These include European non-harmonised standards, international and national standards, professional codes and guidelines, and uncodified best practices. This contribution casts light on the relationship between standards and private law in the context of liability litigation for damage caused by AI systems. Despite literature’s commitment to the issue of liability for AI, the role of standardisation in this regard has been largely overlooked hitherto. Furthermore, while much research has been undertaken on the regulation of AI, comparatively little has dealt with its standardisation. This paper aims to fill this gap. Building on previous scholarship, the contribution demonstrates that standards and professional norms are substantially normative in spite of their private and voluntary nature. In fact, they shape private relationships due to normative and economic reasons. Indeed, these private norms enter the courtrooms by explicit or implicit incorporation into contracts as well as by informing general clauses such as reasonableness and duty of care. Therefore, they represent the yardstick against which professionals’ performance and conduct are evaluated. Hence, a link between standards, safety, and liability can be established. Against this backdrop, the role of AI standards in private law is assessed. To set the scene, the article provides a bird’s-eye view of AI standardisation. The European AI standardisation initiative is analysed along with other institutional and non-institutional instruments. Finally, it is argued that AI standards contribute to defining the duty of care expected from developers and professional operators of AI systems. Hence, they might represent a valuable instrument for tackling the challenges posed by AI technology to extracontractual and contractual liability

Misunderstanding Models in Environmental and Public Health Regulation

Computational models are fundamental to environmental regulation, yet their capabilities tend to be misunderstood by policymakers. Rather than rely on models to illuminate dynamic and uncertain relationships in natural settings, policymakers too often use models as “answer machines.” This fundamental misperception that models can generate decisive facts leads to a perverse negative feedback loop that begins with policymaking itself and radiates into the science of modeling and into regulatory deliberations where participants can exploit the misunderstanding in strategic ways. This paper documents the pervasive misperception of models as truth machines in U.S. regulation and the multi-layered problems that result from this misunderstanding. The paper concludes with a series of proposals for making better use of models in environmental policy analysis.The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Busines

Regulating secure software development : analysing the potential regulatory solutions for the lack of security in software

The security of our informational infra­structure is still relatively poor. Huge investments have been made and even the regulators have taken information security seriously. Majority of current efforts both at the operational and the regulatory level, however, address only symptoms of an underlying problem: the insecurity of the software products - the salient components of most information and software systems. Secure software development has gained momentum during the past couple of years and improvements have been made. By analysing the incentives for secure software development, it is argued in this study that without appropriate regulatory intervention the level of security will not improve to meet the needs of the network society as a whole. Beside information security in general, secure software development has to be raised as an important public policy if we wish to achieve a more secure network society and to maintain trust for information products and systems in commerce. Efficacious regulatory measures are desperately needed to change the current practices. This study analyses two of the most attractive alternatives, software product liability and disclosure of vulnerability information, and makes suggestions for their improvement

Science for Standards: a driver for innovation - JRC Thematic Report

This report aims to give a comprehensive overview of the work of the Commission's in-house science service, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in relation to global standardisation challenges. The description of the JRC's work on standards is divided into six chapters. For each chapter, the detailed policy context is cited, showing clearly how and where the JRC is providing its scientific and technical support to standardisation-related policies.JRC.A.6-Communicatio

Market Structure and Energy Efficiency: The Case of New Commercial Buildings

This is a report on why commercial office buildings aren’t more energy efficient. Several decades of energy efficiency programs have resulted in some gains, but overall increases in the energy efficiency of buildings have fallen far short of the 30 to 50 percent improvement that many efficiency advocates believe is possible. The purpose of this study is to consider the “why” question by empirically examining the dynamics of new commercial building markets. To do so, the authors used multiple research techniques, including qualitative field observation and interview methods that allow for a more in-depth understanding of complicated market processes. Their research focused primarily on new office buildings and centered in four regional markets: Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. The authors identify key dynamics of commercial office building markets, describe how change and innovation occurs in commercial development, discuss the implications for energy efficiency, and suggest next steps

Developing Countries and the Political Economy of the Trading System

trade policy, economic development, international negotiations, WTO