Legal liabilities of AI

Front row, sixth from left: Prof Nazura with participants

The Centre for Sustainable Development and Corporate Social Responsibility in Business (CSDCSR) organised a talk, featuring Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) Faculty of Law and Centre for Collaborative Innovation Prof Dr Nazura Abdul Manap, at UTAR Sungai Long Campus on 19 February 2019. Present at the event were CSDCSR Chairperson Dr Mohammad Falahat Nejadmahani, Faculty of Accountancy and Management lecturers, students and staff.

The talk aimed to address the liability arising from the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and to address whether criminal liability could apply under civil law for AI programme that is subjected to product design legislation or service to which the tort of negligence applies. Aside from that, the talk also highlighted who is liable when AI fails to perform, the area of law that will evolve in the coming years and other AI-related liability considerations.

In the talk, Prof Nazura spoke about AI and its implications on laws in years to come, cyber laws in Malaysia, the stages of the industrial revolution and its impact on the economy and cyber evolution as well as relevant legal issues such as data protection, intellectual property, cyber security and legal entity of personality. She said, “AI is the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. It involves developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes and characteristics of humans such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalise or learn from past experience.”

Prof Nazura explained about innovation and regulation, “Innovation is fast and is on the move, disrupting the way we communicate, create, consume and live. Regulation, on the other hand, is slow, and it needs to be because it takes into account the social impact of technology, its potential uses, abuses and complications. The challenge is on how to create regulations fast enough to follow the ever-evolving technology.”

“Other challenges include slow development of legislation, obsolete legislation, lack of awareness, weakness in enforcement and lack of co-operation. Thus, there is a strong need to set standard and contracts to manage legal problems, statutory regulation and build a stronger harmonisation of national legislation,” said Prof Nazura.

Prof Dr Nazura Abdul Manap is specialised in areas concerning Cyber Law, Computer Law, Information Technology Law and Intellectual Property Law.She obtained her LLB, LLM and PhD at UKM.  She has published various papers on Intellectual Property rights, Cyberspace identity theft, Competition Law, Databases, Trans-border data flows in cloud computing, cyber terrorism challenges and ASEAN development in ICT law. Apart from her law profession, she is currently the Deputy Director of UKM Centre for Collaborative Innovation.

Dr Falahat presenting the token of appreciation to Prof Nazura (right)