As an emeritus professor of computer science, I found this book to be a very interesting introduction to a very relevant topic: the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI). In the preface, the authors note: “the belief that something needs to be done about AI is widely shared.” The authors also state that these “contributions develop regulatory recommendations that do not curb technology’s potential.”

This collection was edited by two German law professors. The preface states that, while the global debate is often based on US constitutional and administrative traditions, this book is oriented to German and European Union (EU) laws and traditions. There are 16 independent chapters written by 16 different authors. All 16 authors have Swiss or German legal backgrounds and are “well acquainted with EU law.” This includes the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the German right to “informational self-determination.” This collection is also a good introduction to the EU and German views of this debate.

Part 1, “Foundations of Artificial Intelligence Regulation,” explains many important issues related to the use of AI techniques:

• The idea of “opening the door” to allow AI to be used in applications that may violate EU and German law (pp. 34-50).
• The idea of overcoming the opacity of AI is presented in “Artificial Intelligence and Transparency: Opening the Black Box” (pp. 75-97), including explainable AI and counterfactual explanations (what factors need to change to force the final decision to change).
• A chapter subtitled “Discriminating Against Discriminatory Systems” (pp. 103-119) discusses issues related to using datasets to make decisions.
• The last chapter in Part 1 discusses the notion of treating an AI program as an intelligent agent and as a person under the law (pp. 123-140).

Part 2, “Governance of and through Artificial Intelligence,” covers many significant topics: social media, law tech (the making of laws and the application of law), administrative decisions, law enforcement, financial markets, government, taxation, healthcare, doctors, patients, liabilities, and business competition.

One minor inconvenience is the lack of indexes. Also, many of the references are in German.