On 9 January 2020, the kick-off meeting of the new research initiative Digital Transformation of Decision-Making was held at the Amsterdam Law School. The initiative examines the normative implications of the shift toward automated decision-making, and the purpose of this first meeting was to bring together researchers from across the Amsterdam Law School who have an interest in the topic and the different possibilities to get involved.

The initiative’s core team was introduced, made up of Prof. dr. Natali Helberger, Prof. dr. Joris van Hoboken, and Prof. dr. Mireille van Eechoud, who lead the initiative; Naomi Appelman and Jill Toh, who are two new PhD researchers; and Dr. Ronan Fahy, a new senior researcher. The meeting was attended by researchers from a diverse range of departments and research centres within the Amsterdam Law School, including from administrative law, consumer law, criminal law, European law, labour law, private law, tax law, Amsterdam Centre for Transformative Private Law, Amsterdam Centre on the Legal Professions (ACLP), Amsterdam Center for Law and Economics, and Institute for Information Law (IViR).

Following a short presentation by Natali Helberger, Joris van Hoboken, and Mireille van Eechoud, the meeting was opened up to hear about participants’ interest in the digital transformation of decision-making. There was great enthusiasm, and the meeting heard about the ongoing work at the Law School connected to the topic. Participants brainstormed about the potential for synergies with this ongoing research at the Law School, and how to take this initiative further successfully.

Finally, the meeting also heard of projects and collaborations already initiated under the Digital Transformation of Decision-Making initiative. These include: a research project for the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK) on the legal framework for tackling disinformation online; a new research collaboration involving researchers from IViR (Joris van Hoboken, Natali Helberger, and Ronan Fahy), and the Amsterdam Centre on the Legal Professions (Anna van Duin), on possible new legal provisions on the rapid removal of illegal content online (for the Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek- en Documentatiecentrum); a research collaboration between IViR and ACLP (Iris van Domselaar, Elke Olthuis, and Anna van Duin) on AI & the Administration of Justice (within RPA Human(e) AI); and the collaboration examining Meaningful Control of Autonomous Systems (MCAS), with Denis Abels (Criminal Law Department) and TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research).

14 January 2020