Artificial Intelligence – Challenges and Chances for Europe 
Joseph Straus
Together with analytics, cloud computing and the internet of things, artificial intelligence (AI) forms an important part of the marriage of physical and advanced digital technologies, which stands for what is commonly understood as the fourth industrial revolution (European Patent Office 2017, 14). Industrial revolutions with their manifold and unpredictable consequences, have always presented great challenges to society. Because of the tendency of the rapid development of science and technology, the very basis of such revolutions, to overwhelm and outdistance the law, legislators are faced with the formidable problem of how to ‘tame the unleashed genie of science, so that it remains the servant not the master of mankind’ (Markey 1989, 15). However, AI technology has added a new quality to the old problem: it enables machines, which use algorithms, to learn iteratively from data and think in concepts and eventually turn themselves into a source of new knowledge, generated by AI.
Owing to its practically universal applicability, AI puts many long-standing paradigms into question and calls for new solutions. In order to let science and technology generate results that benefit the society at large, legislators more than ever have to interact with scientists, ethicists, economists and numerous stakeholders to reach responsible, prudent and farsighted future-oriented decisions.
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