Law and Artificial Intelligence

Neither apocalypse nor naive enthusiasm: a realist approach to regulating artificial intelligence in the public sphere.

Governments already use algorithms to manage data, detect fraud, anticipate crime and process files. How should the law respond? In four connected studies, Ricardo Rivero Ortega argues that lists of ethical principles are not enough, and that a guarantee-based overreaction that ignores how the technology works is just as harmful. What is needed are precise duties, effective oversight and sanctions grounded in facts.

• Smart public management and Big Data: what administrative data can really do, real applications in government, and their risks and limits.
• Algorithms, biases, sex and gender: why ignoring the side effects of social interventions provokes backlash, and how legal principles restore good sense.
• Predictive policing: from science fiction to PreCrime reality, the hypertrophy of the surveillance state and the guarantees it requires.
• Bots as public employees: the constitutional limits to replacing civil servants with algorithms, and the rights citizens keep in every case.

An introductory essay discusses ethics versus regulation, whether a specialized AI agency is needed, and how to avoid both passivity and overreaction.

For scholars and students of public law, regulators, public managers and anyone following the debate on AI governance.

Translated from the Spanish original, Derecho e Inteligencia Artificial. Cuatro estudios (2023).

Ricardo Rivero Ortega is Professor of Administrative Law at the University of Salamanca, where he was Dean of the Faculty of Law (2012-2017) and Rector (2017-2024). Since 2025 he has presided over the International Institute of Administrative Law.