Prospects on Risks, Liabilities and Artificial Intelligence, empowering Robots at Workplace Level. The EU Regulation 2024/1689, with the related EU and Domestic Legal Frames, compared to the U.S. Legal System

The tech transformation is forcing us to rethink new solutions for mapping risks and opportunities arising from interactions between robots, empowered by AI, and workers (“IWRs”). While doing so, we must keep in mind that the debate is not about artificial intelligence and robots, but about us, who will have to live and work with them. Following this line of thought, we are aware that there are challenging changes ahead. Such changes should be investigated in relation to the occurrence of new social and psychophysical risks connected to IWRs. This essay is built on the conviction that robots empowered by AI (“AI/R”), also in the form of the so-called “Frontier AI”, should not merely augment humans in their capabilities, but that AI/R and workers can become better together, thereby boosting worker wellbeing and productivity. The absence of a unified scientific framework makes us blind to various forms of reciprocity that exist when AI/R share the same physical and social space as workers. The present work is aimed at buttressing the forefront of understanding and shaping the future of work regulation around AI/R, the related liabilities regime, also with reference to possible damages to compensate and risks to mitigate, moving from a legal comparison between the EU and U.S. labor systems in the field of accidents at work and occupational diseases.