Robo-advice: automazione e determinismo nei servizi di investimento ad alto valore aggiunto

The article discusses the impact of automation on the regulation of financial advice and portfolio management under Italian law. Such automation can be achieved through deterministic or non-deterministic algorithms, allowing varying degrees of control over both the process and the output. In particular, non-deterministic algorithms used in machine learning, albeit promising better outputs, prove more difficult to supervise. This distinction has strong legal implications. Firstly, it can be used to study how the law deals with automation, finding non-deterministic algorithms largely lacking specific regulation. Secondly, deterministic and non-deterministic algorithms pose different regulatory policy issues, which should be taken into account both when supervising firms or enforcing conduct of business rules and when discussing the granting of some form of separate legal personality to automatic systems.