Democracy through law The Transatlantic Reflection Group and its manifesto in defence of democracy and the rule of law in the age of “artificial intelligence”

• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Author: Paul Nemitz
• Date: 01 January 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/eulj.12407

EPILOGUE

Democracy through law

The Transatlantic Reflection Group and its

manifesto in defence of democracy and the rule of

law in the age of “artificial intelligence”

Paul Nemitz

*

The Transatlantic Reflection Group on Democracy and the Rule of Law in the Age of Artificial Intelligence was a

collective exercise. At the outset was a conversation I had with Konstantinos Karachalios, an engineer by profession,

working as the director of standardisation at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). We go back

a long way. Konstantinos takes seriously the motto of the IEEE, ‘Advancing Technology for Humanity’. He under-

stands that ‘for Humanity’is filled with meaning and refers to a purpose of technology which is neither in the first

place oriented towards, nor limited in its purpose to, business objectives.

In late 2020, we started to mull over the idea of bringing together a multidisciplinary group of women and men

from both sides of the Atlantic to see how democracy and the rule of law could be invigorated in light of the threats

to democracy and law posed by the absence of sufficient regulation of the big digital corporations and their

activities, and by powerful new multipurpose technologies like ‘artificial intelligence’. The storming of the US

Capitol on 6 January 2021 was fresh in our minds when we started calling around and sending invitations to join the

group.

In March 2021, we had a first meeting of the group, facilitated by the founder and CEO of the New York

Company H5, Nicolas Economou. We met every last Friday of the month, for two hours, over the internet. In

between, we worked on a written procedure. Two drafts of the text were the basis of our later consensus, a first

produced by me, a second evolution by Marietje Schaake. Both mutations received very detailed oral and written

proposals for changes by the members of the group. At the beginning of May, the group agreed to aim for the

publication of a final text a few days before the visit of President Biden to Brussels for the EU–US Summit on

14 June. This objective focused minds and increased the intensity of work. The paper was published in time and

signed up later by others.

It is documented here, together with a few lines which explain my personal motivation to start this group. This

motivation may not be shared by all who participated. But that does not matter. Because that is one of the rules of

democracy: we may have very different motivations, we may have very different backgrounds, we may speak

different languages. But we can understand each other and eventually agree on matters so important that it

The author presents a personal opinion and not necessarily that of the European Commission.

*

Principal Advisor, European Commission, Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers; visiting Law Professor at the College of Europe. paul.

nemitz@ec.europa.eu

Received: 23 September 2021 Accepted: 30 September 2021

DOI: 10.1111/eulj.12407

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