Lecture on January 9th, 2019
The Ethics of Law and the Laws of Ethics
Professor Mireille Hildebrandt, Vrije Universiteit Brussel/Radboud University Nijmegen
About the lecture
In the realm of data-driven decision-making (whether public or private) the supposedly shallow requirements of the GDPR are often juxtaposed with a supposedly deeper need to engage with ‘AI and Ethics’. This lecture will inquire into the differences between law and ethics and their relationship, in the era of data-driven 'everyware’. I will argue that the legal framework of the Rule of Law is a necessity if we expect powerful players to act ethically (without being pushed out of the market). This means legislating the concomitant level playing field to enable a robust, fair and productive market economy. In the case of data-driven economies, this will require various types of legal protection by design, since data-driven infrastructures cannot be ruled by text-driven legislation if the relevant legal norms are not articulated in the technologies they aim to regulate. This will link legal protection by design with the idea of ‘values by design’, highlighting the need to connect the dots between both.
About the speaker
Mireille Hildebrandt is a Research Professor on 'Interfacing Law and Technology' at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB), appointed by the VUB Research Council. She works with the research group on Law Science Technology and Society studies (LSTS) at the Faculty of Law and Criminology. She also holds the part-time Chair of Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law at the Science Faculty, at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS) at Radboud University Nijmegen. Her research interests concern the implications of automated decisions, machine learning and mindless artificial agency for law and the rule of law in constitutional democracies. She received an ERC Advanced Grant for her project on ‘Counting as a Human Being in the era of Computational Law’ (2019-2024), see www.cohubicol.com.
photo credit: private
Wednesday, 9. January 2019, 18:00-20:00
Main Campus, Hörsaal B
Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1
20146 Hamburg
programme lecture Prof. Mireille Hildebrandt [pdf]
programme "Taming the Machines" [pdf]
site plans:
lecture halls at Edmund-Siemers Allee 1: ESA1 [pdf]
University of Hamburg (Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1 is number 12 in C3 of the map): UHH [pdf]