Implementation of the autonomy of will in legal relations through information technologies leads to the origination of new forms of individuality and interests, in particular, the artificial ones outside of the established approaches to legal regulation. Modern information technologies offer new opportunities for the exercise and protection of human rights and for cryptographic security of human privacy, but they also may become the tools used to commit offenses. Automatic decision-making simplifies legal procedures, but unfair algorithms impose inequality, exclusion and oppression. The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of personal autonomy in IT- law and to make a forecast of its prospects, to describe the existing and necessary legal guarantees of individual self-control in the digital age. The analysis of the practice of the US Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice demonstrates that administration of justice in the context of IT-expansion into legal relations creates the need to maintain the balance of rights and obligations, to adapt the existing legal mechanisms to new realities and apply the fundamental principles of law with a view to developing the legal mechanisms under the conditions when the old legal technologies are no longer able to efficiently facilitate the establishment of the rule of law. One of the specific features of personal autonomy in the IT-law is the variability and unprecedented nature of its manifestations, and this requires that new legal mechanisms be created for the establishment of the rule of law based on the subsidiarity of law enforcement, trust and non-interference with the autonomous social relations in the IT-field, except for cases when it is required by law, for example, in case a person is unable to avoid obvious threats or solve problems and conflicts. Given the increasing significance of robots (i.e. machines automatically working in the interests of humans) in the life of civilized society and the successful development of artificial intelligence able to make independent decisions with regard to legal relations, a need arises to consider the possibility of recognizing the constitutional rights of robots, in particular, the rights to existence, proper operation and protection under law which are linked to the duties of robots to serve humans. It is necessary to take care not only of the responsibility of humans for their robots and of robots for illegal operation, for example, in the form of deactivation, but also to ensure that the software of intelligent machines incorporates technical guarantees of legitimate operation and ethical prerequisites like the three laws of A. Azimov’s robotics, which should be an integral part of the machine’s system for independent decision-making and artificial personal autonomy, i. e. Legal autonomy of artificial intelligence. In this context, the criteria of legal capacity of artificial intelligence may be established by law and applied by courts and law enforcement agencies, if necessary, with the involvement of artificial intelligence experts for the purpose of addressing the issue of a robot’s forced deactivation, similarly to a forensic psychiatric expert examination to check the criminal delictual dispositive capacity and civil legal capacity of an individual.

List of legal documents

Legislation

1. European Parliament resolution of 16 February 2017 with recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics (2015/2103(INL)). URL: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P8-TA2017-0051+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN (accessed: 21.02.2018) (in English).

2. Resolution Supporting the designation of National Robotics Week as an annual event (H Res 1055 – 111th Congress, 9 March 2010). URL: https://www.congress.gov/ bill/111th-congress/house-resolution/1522/text (accessed: 21.02.2018) (in English).

Cases

3. Case 13-132 Riley v California (U S Supreme Court, 25 June 2014) (in English).

4. Bărbulescu v Romania App no 61496/08 (ECtHR, 5 September 2017) (in English).

5. Cengiz and Others v Turkey App nos. 48226/10 and 14027/11 (ECtHR, 1 December 2015) (in English).

6. Ahmet Yıldırım v Turkey App no 3111/10 (ECtHR, 18 December 2012) (in English).

7. Case C-264/14 Skatteverket v David Hedqvist [2015] ECJ (in English).

8. Case C-99/16 Jean-Philippe Lahorgue v Ordre des avocats du barreau de Lyon and Others [2017] ECJ (in English).

United Nations documents

9. UNHRC, ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Farida Shaheed’ (2014) UN Doc A/HRC/28/57. URL: http://undocs.org/A/HRC/28/57 (accessed: 21.02.2018) (in English).

10. UNHRC, ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights’ (2016) UN Doc A/HRC/31/59. URL: http://undocs.org/A/HRC/31/59 (accessed: 21.02.2018) (in English).

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