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This article focuses on the problem of regulation of the application of the autonomous weapons systems from the perspective of the norms and principles of international humanitarian law. The article discusses the question of what restrictions are imposed on the application of such weapons in the international humanitarian law. The article presents a number of principles that must be met by both the weapons and their method of their application: distinction between civilians and combatants, military necessity, proportionality, prohibition on causing unnecessary suffering, and humanity.

The author concludes that from the perspective of the principles of the international humanitarian law, it is doubtful if autonomous systems would be able to comply with these principles. Weapons that hit targets without human intervention have been applied for a long time, but they have never had the independence that they have now. The issue of compliance of autonomous weapons systems with the international humanitarian law can be considered if sufficient experience of application of such weapons in real conditions is accumulated.

This study demonstrates that it is impossible to say that autonomous weapons systems do not comply with the principles of humanitarian law in general. The paper provides policy recommendations and assessments for each of the principles under consideration. The author also concludes that it would be necessary not to prohibit autonomous weapons, because they do not comply with the principles of international humanitarian law, but to develop rules for their application and for human participation in their functioning. A significant challenge to the development of such rules is the opacity of these autonomous weapons systems, if we look at them as at the complex intelligent computer systems.

The global human influence on the climate is growing at an alarming pace. This trend appears doomed to continue. Polar regions are feeling the effects first. This means that if the impacts of climate change serve to motivate effective policies, polar regions could be a good place to look for climate policy innovation. It is within this context that this article considers Arctic climate policy in Russia and Canada. The basic question posed is whether the unique and immediate threat climate change presents in the Arctic is reflected in progressive laws and policies with respect to four key areas: mitigation, adaptation, impacts and vulnerability, and development.

This article focuses on the problems of the application of AI as a tool of crime from the perspective of the norms and principles of Criminal law. The article discusses the question of how the legal framework in the area of culpability determination could be applied to offenses committed with the use of AI. The article presents an analysis of the current state in the sphere of criminal law for both intentional and negligent offenses as well as a comparative analysis of these two forms of culpability.

Part of the work is devoted to culpability in intentional crimes. Results of analysis in the paper demonstrate that the law-enforcer and the legislator should reconsider the approach to determining culpability in the case of the application of artificial intelligence systems for committing intentional crimes. As an artificial intelligence system, in some sense, has its own designed cognition and will, courts could not rely on the traditional concept of culpability in intentional crimes, where the intent is clearly determined in accordance with the actions of the criminal.

Criminal negligence is reviewed in the article from the perspective of a developer’s criminal liability. The developer is considered as a person who may influence on and anticipate harm caused by AI system that he/she created. If product developers are free from any form of criminal liability for harm caused by their products, it would lead to highly negative social consequences. The situation when a person developing AI system has to take into consideration all potential harm caused by the product also has negative social consequences. The authors conclude that the balance between these two extremums should be found. The authors conclude that the current legal framework does not conform to the goal of a culpability determination for the crime where AI is a tool.

This article discusses the issue of the introduction of digital technologies into policy-making. The article describes several systems of policy-making in the Russian Federation. In addition, the article discusses the issue of the introduction of a new System of policy-making in the light of the digital transformation of the Russian economy.

The paper analyzes the capacities of digital technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), in the context of their application in policy-making. The authors conclude that there are prerequisites and opportunities for deeper automation of the policy-making. This can improve the quality of the bills, can increase public involvement in the policy-making process, and speed up the development and adoption of new regulations. An intelligent system can develop legislative bills that are of superior technical quality and are non-contradictory in the context of both national and international legal systems. Digitalization processes should naturally lead to changes in the mechanism of policy-making, which in turn should lead to its greater automation. Moreover, insufficient automation today can become an obstacle in the digital transformation of the Russian economy.

The authors conclude that in the future it would be possible for intellectual systems to author bills. The general development of AI systems shows that given the parameters of the problem and given the circumstance when the machine would be able to detect a center of social tensions in the community, the intelligent system itself would be capable of making proposals in the field of legislative regulation.

The application of intelligent systems in policy-making is not without its drawbacks. Such systems are not transparent in the legal and technical sense and can also transfer human beliefs into the texts of the regulations. These problems can be addressed through public scrutiny and the introduction of a licensing system, however even this would create a number of new practical challenges.

Socio-political problems are discussed in this article connected with the provision of socio-cultural integrity of the society in modern time of mass digitalization and introduction of the automatic and algorithmic systems. In the content of this article digitalization is considered as a global socio-political project, oriented for substitution traditional bases of identification and organization communities. This project is considered from critical position and is based, that its necessary state – oriented policy, directed for conservation and reproduction the historical memory, socio-cultural dominant of the development the society and also metapolitical and meta-legal foundation for sustainability of the political – legal organization in the 21st century.

The authors speak about the thesis about further convergence of the digital and cultural trends of transformations of socio-political system, when processes of digitalization will acquire more and more socio-cultural particularity of the development.

As Arctic navigation increases and states work, both at the international and the domestic level, at ensuring legal readiness, this article takes a closer look at regulation of Arctic Shipping in Canada and Russia. The analysis first focuses on the current domestic regimes that have developed over the past decades. It highlights that dissimilar political, economic and environmental contexts have shaped not only different shipping patterns off the Canadian and Russian coasts, but also dissimilar coastal state approaches that do not seem to converge noticeably under the influence of the Polar Code. The analysis then turns to challenges that lay ahead as existing regimes could be called into question due to receding ice cover and may need to adapt to evolving shipping patterns and technological innovations.

Since the introduction of computer technologies and the internet, Russia has been trying to adopt different strategies on maintaining social order in cyberspace. The purpose of this article is, by studying the stages of enacting legislation against cybercrime, to explore the Russian model of cyberspace regulation. In order to get control over the internet and to maintain security and stability in society, the Russian government has implemented new provisions of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and other means. This article demonstrates how criminal law and other measures may be used to fight cybercrime, and how the legislative body reacts on social concern about cybercrime. Russian legislation against cybercrime passed the same phases as cyber law in other countries: first, criminalizing and penalizing particular cybercrime types, and then, developing a complicated system of cyber regulation. The process of cyber regulation was influenced by changing cybercrime characteristics, transformation of enforcement policy, and international treaties ratified by the Russian Federation. Regardless of active efforts in fighting cybercrime, Russian hackers are still a big threat to Russia and, in general, globally. The article concludes that the hacker subculture is one of the main factors producing cybercrime.

The article focuses on the general issues of legal regulation of relations that emerge in the field of application of VR technologies and presents issues associated with the regulation of development of such technologies. It looks at the features of this technology that create challenges for the development of a system of legal regulation of its application. The article also gives a perspective at major factors that make application of the existing law difficult and offers analysis of the emerging issues of its regulation. The author arrives at a conclusion that this technology is fundamentally different from the other existing technologies as it combines the properties of both physical reality and cyberspace. Among the challenges of the legal regulation of VR are a high realism, complete immersion user experience, and low cyber protection of both hardware and software components. The author evaluates several regulatory approaches, which could be used in the case of virtual reality and finds that all of them have major deficiencies. Contemporary research findings in secure application of VR in the fields of teaching and entertainment get rapidly outdated as they cannot catch up with the technology development, therefore they can only serve as a ground for the development of a system of VR regulation with consideration of this factor.

This question of AI legal personhood is mostly theoretical today. In article we try to generalize some common ways that existing in legal theory and practice. We analyze some cases of recognition of untypical legal persons as well enacted statements in Europe and USA. Readers will not find a detailed methodology in the paper, but rather a list of criteria that is helpful to make a decision on granting legal personhood.

Practices of European Union and the United States indicate that common approaches to the legal personality of some kinds of AI are already developed. Both countries are strongly against legal personhood of intellectual war machines. Liability for any damage of misbehavior of military AI is still on competence of military officers. In case of civil application of AI there are two options. AI could be as legal person or as an agent of business relations with other legal persons. Every legal person has to be recognized as such by society. All untypical legal persons have wide recognition of society. When considering the issue of introducing a new legal person into the legal system, legislators must take into account the rights of already existing subjects. Policy makers have to analyze how such legal innovation will comply with previous legal order, first of all how it will affect the fundamental rights and freedoms of the human beings. The legal personhood of androgenic robots that can imitate human behavior regarded in paper as a good solution to minimize illegal and immoral acts committed with their involvement. It would be a factor that keep people from taking action against robots very similar to people. Authors conclude that key factors would be how society will react to a new legal person, how changing of legal rules will affect legal system and why it is necessary. At least all new untypical legal persons are recognized by society, affects of the legal system in manageable way and brings definite benefits to state and society.

This article focuses on the regulation of maritime autonomous surface vessels from the perspective of international law of the sea. The article discusses on the possibility of developing a legal framework to regulate autonomous maritime navigation based on laws and regulation of autonomous driving of landed vehicles. The authors opine that existing legal framework does not conform to the goal of regulation of autonomous navigation. However, the regulation of autonomous car testing and exploitation could be imitated to design a new legal framework for autonomous shipping. Despite the divergent approaches, some principles remain in common particularly of cybersecurity and privacy. As computer systems are replacing the need of a master and crew for digitally managed ships, low level of cybersecurity implies an increase in risk of losing control over the vessel. The authors are of the opinion that that current legal acts, standards and their drafts do not pay necessary attention to the problem of cybersecurity of autonomous ships. Moreover, current legislations do not provide mechanisms of influence on behavior of shipowner and shipbuilder to make them apply the best measures. The similar situation is with privacy. Factually, an autonomous ship is a natural tool for surveillance, as to effectively navigate through the seas, it must collect and process information pertaining to navigational safety and other related matters. The question raises how this information has to be collected, kept, processed and deleted. Thus, the maritime community may consider adopting the approach on privacy from regulation for autonomous cars.