Smart Technologies and Fundamental Rights

The present volume, Smart Technologies and Fundamental Rights, contains fourteen outstanding and challenging articles concerning fundamental rights and Artificial Intelligence at the intersection of law, ethics and smart technologies.
The chapters in this volume cover a broad range of vital topics that highlight the ethical, socio-political, and legal challenges as well as technical issues involving the relationship between ai and fundamental rights. Unquestionably, the use of ai could eventually lead to a better and more humane society in almost all domains of human life. However, as some scholars have forcefully argued, the potential for misuse of ai by individuals, companies, or the state is high. Moreover, the so-called alignment problem, or the idea that intelligent machines may turn against human beings if we fail to teach (or educate) them properly, is yet another threat. Therefore, we should be extremely cautious with respect to how we develop ai, because we might not be able to control the machines once they have reached a certain level of sophistication; in other words, at some point it will become impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. Without question, ai is a double-edged sword that could bring humanity the greatest of benefits but also the greatest of miseries, or even conceivably our extinction.
We hope that the chapters of this volume will contribute greatly to the ongoing debates with respect to the special relation of smart technologies and fundamental rights.