The use of artificial intelligence technologies and other means of automating legal processes increasingly affects legal issues. These include the possibility of making legally significant decisions for humans based on automated information processing, and discrimination in the provision of services. On the other hand, the development of digital platforms and communications allows for the implementation of multiple mechanisms that increase the predictability and transparency of law enforcement processes, ensuring the automation of the collection and verification of reports and control procedures.

At present, active work is underway to study the possibilities for the use of information technologies in law around the world. Research in this field is conducted by the specialists of the Skolkovo Foundation, the CodeX Research Center at Stanford University, the MIT Computational Law Center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Center for Computational Law at Singapore Management University. One of the main directions is to present norms and obligations in formal languages — understandable and, in some cases, enforceable by modern intelligent systems.

The working group “Regulations” of the ANO Digital Economy approved the draft concept for the development of machine-readable law technology prepared by the Skolkovo Competence Center and forwarded it to the Ministry of Economic Development for adoption. The developers believe that the introduction of machine-readable law technology will reduce citizens’ expenses on lawyers, as well as transform the sphere of the state’s control and supervisory activity.

When brought to the application of the law, mathematical logic can significantly transform the scope of control and supervisory activities of the state and build a more predictable and comfortable business climate, which can, in turn, affect economic and investment growth, claim the authors of the project.

With the need to preserve the legal tools providing the balance of interests of all social actors in mind, the experts discussed the possibilities and prospects of describing the law in formal (machine-readable) languages, particularly norms set by the regulator and applied by market participants.

As part of the discussion, experts expressed their opinions on the relevance of machine-readable law as well as their assumptions on how this format will affect daily activities. Anna Serebryanikova, President of the Big Data Association and Managing Partner at Nlogic, said that the transition to machine-readable law is inevitable, and the process has already started. The expert drew attention to the fact that lawyers are already using automation in their daily lives, notably when using legal reference systems such as GARANT. The use of such tools has a positive impact on productivity.