ETH Center for Law & Economics

🤖 Can AI commit crimes? Join us for the 14th Science in Perspective Talk at ETH Zürich, on Machine Crimes. We explore the new framework of “machine criminology," introduced by Alessandro Tacconelli, that examines how system design, training data, and interactions may shape unlawful behavior of AI. A forward-looking panel brings together experts in ethics, AI research, and criminal law to rethink how we govern intelligent systems in a rapidly evolving technological landscape. Speakers:  • Margarita Boenig-Liptsin — Professor for Ethics, Technology, and Society, ETH Zürich • Imanol Schlag — AI Research Scientist, ETH AI Center & co-lead of Apertus, developed as part of the Swiss AI Initiative • Alessandro Tacconelli — Doctoral Researcher, ETH Center for Law & Economics for Law & Economics • Nadine Zurkinden — Professor for Criminal Law, Universität Zürich | University of Zurich Moderator: Eva Pauline Bossow 📅 Thursday, April 23, 2026 🕕 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm (followed by an aperitif) 📍 ETH Zurich, GLC, Floor E (34.1 & 34.2) We look forward to welcoming you to this engaging discussion! Please register here: https://lnkd.in/eZei2ydj Admission is free. #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #AIEthics #MachineLearning #AIResearch #CriminalLaw #AIandLaw #ETHZurich

Once, a professor I deeply admire told me that academia can be a lonely job. "Collaboration," he added, "is one of the few antidotes." If we push that idea a bit further (the more collaborators, the less loneliness), then with this project, I think I’m set for life 🙂. I’m happy to share a new publication in Nature to which I contributed (among many others): 👉🏼 https://lnkd.in/eZa-_ff9 This work brings together hundreds of researchers, over 4+ years, around one shared question: how robust is our science, really? 🔎 What did we do? In this crowd initiative, we investigated how much research findings in the social and behavioural sciences depend on analysts’ choices. We reanalysed a stratified sample of 100 studies (2009 - 2018), with at least 5(!) independent analysts per study, all working on the same original data. 📊 What did we find? 1) Only 34% of results closely matched the original estimates. 2) 74% reached the same conclusion as the original investigation. 3) 24% yielded no effects or inconclusive results, and 2% reported the opposite effect. 💡 In short: scientific conclusions are often more fragile, and more dependent on researcher decisions, than we might assume. 🙏 A huge thank you to the incredible community behind this effort: hundreds of collaborators, independent analysts, and an outstanding core team (Balazs Aczel, Barnabas Szaszi, Harry Clelland and others) that made this possible. A special shoutout to the SCORE leadership (Brian Nosek and others) for coordinating not only this project, but a broader portfolio of SCORE projects, together forming what can only be described as a colossal scientific collaboration.

AI and competition law: is it only AI being incorporated into the anyway leading digital ecosystem, thereby entrenching Gatekeeper power? Or will we also see AI bots turning into platforms by way of app integration (cf. ChatGPT app store? In the latter case, is the narrative of unassailable Gatekeeper power actually true? (Price) recommender tools (cf. RealPage) and price uniformity, without much "agreement"-style contact between competitors: where are safe harbors and rules of thumb that can guide businesses and authorities - is the use of sensitive business information a good primary indication? These and many other topics made the Spring meeting of the ASCOLA - Academic Society for Competition Law AI competition working group my Q1 favorite event. Thanks to Study Center Gerzensee and Martin Brown for your hospitality, to the European Commission, Bundeskartellamt, CMA, AGCM for working with us, to Thomas C. for co-chairing, to Josef Drexl, Stefan Thomas, Ariel Ezrachi, Michal Gal, Stefan Bechtold, Giuseppe Colangelo, Niccolò Galli, Nicolas Eschenbaum, Joseph Harrington, Salil Mehra, and all discussants for your insightful contributions and the spirit of friendship, to Center for Intellectual Property and Competition Law (CIPCO) for resource support #AI #antitrust #competition #ascola #Gatekeeper #RealPage #tacitcollusion #ecosystem

What is the real state of EU copyright law in the age of Generative AI? And which licensing model can genuinely reconcile fair remuneration for creators with the need to unlock the innovative potential and global competitiveness of the EU AI industry? In a climate of uncertainty fragmentation and regulatory overlaps characterising the current EU copyright landscape, the choice of an appropriate remuneration framework for the use of protected works in AI training emerges as one of the most urgent and consequential challenges for EU policymakers. Striking the right balance will shape not only the future of Europe’s creative sectors, but also the trajectory of its AI ecosystem. You can register for the seminar at the European University Institute website: https://lnkd.in/eNXC-qex I'll be discussing an economic perspective on copyright policy options, together with Axel Voss, Caterina Sganga, Alessia Leonardi, Bianca Terracciano, Camilla Signoretta, Natalia Menéndez González, Pier Luigi Parcu, Julie Samnadda

Inviting submissions -- the 5th Zurich Workshop in AI & Applied Economics taking place Sept 11th-12th submit by May 8th organized with Sergio Galletta, Joachim Voth, and David Yanagizawa-Drott. Call for papers: https://lnkd.in/eFiTDnJS Submission form: https://lnkd.in/emxw5DqM More info, including links to previous editions: https://lnkd.in/ehBjWUZ2 This is the 5th edition of our annual workshop, founded in 2022 under the name "AI+Economics Workshop". We have rebranded to "AI & Applied Economics" to highlight our applied micro niche -- "Applied" as in "AEJ Applied". So we want applied econ papers either using AI (broadly understood, including ML, NLP, etc.) or studying AI. Alongside the main workshop track, we will have a panel discussion on methods and agentic AI, and a poster session for more preliminary work. This year we are also doing a summer school for PhD students, more on that shortly. Looking forward to reading your submissions!

We are excited to announce that we have secured an SNSF (Schweizerischer Nationalfonds SNF) grant (CHF 3.4 million) for the project “Responsible AI for the Swiss Judiciary.” At a time when AI is increasingly used in courts without clear rules or evidence about its impact, the project aims to develop and empirically test AI tools together with Swiss courts. The project brings together Elliott Ash, Stefan Bechtold, Christoph Engel, Jakob Merane, Alexander Stremitzer (all ETH Zürich), Cordula Lötscher (Universität Basel), and Antoine Bosselut (EPFL). Stay tuned! ✨

🚨 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐏𝐀𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒 - 𝐀𝐈 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐋𝐚𝐰 at #ICML2026 🚨 Excited to announce the 𝐀𝐈 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐋𝐚𝐰 Workshop at [ICML] Int'l Conference on Machine Learning, taking place on July 10/11 in Seoul 🇰🇷. Background: As AI systems rapidly advance in general reasoning and multimodal capabilities, law remains a uniquely demanding and high-stakes domain. Many legal tasks require structured, long-form reasoning, sensitivity to jurisdictional and linguistic variation, and robustness in contexts where errors can have real-world consequences. This workshop is centered on a key question: 👉 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐧 𝐀𝐈 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐚𝐰, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐛𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐭, 𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐣𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬? We invite submissions from ML, NLP, multimodal AI, and legal research communities across three core themes: ⚖️ 𝐀𝐈 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐋𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐥 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 - Long-form legal reasoning and argument generation - Issue spotting, rule interpretation, and analogical reasoning - Faithfulness and doctrinal grounding in legal outputs - Domain-specific supervision and legal knowledge integration - Task design for evaluating legal reasoning capabilities 📊 𝐀𝐈 𝐄𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐋𝐚𝐰 - Benchmarks for legal reasoning across jurisdictions and languages - Evaluation of correctness, reasoning quality, and legal risk - Limitations of LLM-as-a-judge in legal settings - Robustness, calibration, and uncertainty in legal predictions - Dataset design, annotation frameworks, and evaluation protocols 🌍 𝐀𝐈 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞 - AI systems for legal assistance and public access - Fairness, bias, and inclusion in legal AI systems - Multilingual and cross-jurisdictional accessibility - Socio-technical and institutional considerations - Risks of automation in high-stakes legal context 📄 Submission format: Full papers (up to 8 pages) ⏰ Submission deadline: May 22, 2026, 23:59 (Anywhere on Earth) This workshop aims to bridge machine learning and legal scholarship, and to shape a research agenda for AI systems that are not only more capable, but also more reliable and societally grounded. A joint effort with (A - Z): Elliott Ash, Claire Barale, Benjamin Minhao Chen, Christoph Engel, Fabio J. Fehr, Yansong Feng, Peter Henderson, Alexander Hoyle, Yinya Huang, Wonseok Hwang, Daniel Katz, Aniket Kesari, Robert Mahari, Jakob Merane, Jingwei Ni, Joel Niklaus, Julian Nyarko, Hai Jin Park, Dominik Stammbach, Aurelia Tamo-Larrieux, Yang Tian, Frederike Zufall

🌍 I’m honoured to share that I’ve been selected as a 2026–2027 Hauser & Remarque Global Fellow at New York University. I’ll be returning to New York this summer. The Hauser & Remarque Global Fellowship is a highly selective international program that convenes a small cohort of interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners working on global challenges at the intersection of law, institutions, and governance (Hauser), and on the cultural and political dynamics shaping global systems and transatlantic relations (Remarque). During this time, I will further develop my empirical agenda on how law, emerging technologies, and informal norms shape global cultural markets. I’ll be focusing primarily on the art world and the role of global hubs such as New York in the art trade. In parallel, I will continue to develop my work on the luxury industry, its expanding secondary market, and evolving consumer behaviours. I’m very grateful to the selection committee for this opportunity and look forward to being back in the Village. 🌍 #Hauser #Remarque #Law #Tech #Art #Luxury

New BlogPost on the risks and benefits of smart contracts in financial contracting, with the amazing Stefan Bechtold, Edoardo Martino, and Gideon Parchomovsky. Based on our recent paper "Property without Law" (https://lnkd.in/ei9wMXfs) https://lnkd.in/eSg5PXHS