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24 March event with Prof. Fleur Johns discussing her new book ‘#Help: Digital Humanitarianism and the Remaking of International Order’
COHUBICOL is organising an event on 24 March 2023 on Prof. Fleur Johns’ new book #Help: Digital Humanitarianism and the Remaking of International Order (OUP, 2023). Coming out this spring, the new work presents a study of ‘digital humanitarianism’ and how these practices will impact international politics and international law. In #Help, Johns engages in an in-depth analysis of how digitalization presents challenges as well as opportunities for the humanitarian field. The book seeks to unearth, explicate, and critically assess the implicit yet omnipresent reconfigurations that digital interfaces present us with in the context of humanitarian work. However, unquestionably, the book’s relevance stretches far beyond the humanitarian field and goes right to the heart of the international order, both present and future. Discussing this timely work will be Dr. Delphine Dogot, whose expertise and research will make for an enriching and interesting discussion.
... »Diver presented on ‘Legal Technologies and the Effect on Legal Effect’ at Helsinki Legal Tech Lab (15-16 Feb 2023)
Laurence was invited to present at the University of Helsinki Legal Tech Lab’s Law, Tech and Theory Research Seminar on Feb 15-16. His presentation focused on the idea of legal institutional facts as the fundamental building blocks of law, and how their creation is affected by the technologies that are involved in legal practice. This happens at both the practical level (how legal practices and processes are impacted by the use of certain technologies), and at the conceptual level (how we think of legal facts per se). Assessing the desirability and validity of legal technologies requires a framework for thinking about the nature and extent of such impacts, including e.g. the assessment method set out in COHUBICOL’s Typology of Legal Technologies.
... »Hildebrandt participates in debate on smart technologies and climate change from the perspective of the democratic rule of law (Amsterdam, 20 Feb 2023)
In an event held at De Balie in Amsterdam, Mireille Hildebrandt will participate in a debate (in Dutch) alongside other academics (in law, philosophy, and data-driven/algorithmic systems), journalists, and writers. The speakers will discuss the topic of “menselijk recht in tijden van datasturing and natuurgeweld” (human-made law in the era of data control and natural disasters). The debate will take as its starting point and common thread excerpts from the forthcoming book of jurist and philosopher Maxim Februari entitled Doe zelf normaal: Menselijk recht in tijden van datasturing en natuurgeweld. The invited speakers will talk about the issue at the heart of Februari’s new book: how to safeguard fundamental rights and the rule of law in societies facing the daunting issues of climate change and the rise of smart technologies. Central to the evening’s thematic discussion is how to best involve society at large in the discussion on how the rule of law needs to adapt in light of these developments. How can human beings retain some level of control in a world where the forces of nature and technology seem to incrementally erode it? For more information (tickets or livestream, visit the website of De Balie).
... »Hildebrandt delivers keynote at BIOSTEC 2023 conference (17 Feb 2023)
During the 16th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies BIOSTEC 2023 (16-18 February 2023), Mireille Hildebrandt will deliver a keynote where she will discuss the use of health-related training data for medical research in light of the EU Health Data Space. If such data is deployed as a proxy for ‘the truth on the ground’, we need to address the issue of proxies. Ground truth in machine learning is the pragmatic stand-in or proxy for whatever is considered to be the case or should be the case. Developing a ground truth dataset requires curation, that is a number of translations, constructions and cleansing. What if the resulting proxies misrepresent what they stand for and what if the imposed interoperability of health data across the EU affects the quality of the data and/or their relationship to what they stand for? She will argue that ground-truthing is an act rather than a given, that this act is key to machine learning and assert that this act can have potentially fatal implications for the reliability of the output. Deciding on the ground truth is what philosophers may call a speech act with performative effects. Emphasising these effects will allow us to better address the constructive nature of the datasets used in medical informatics and should help the EU legislature to take a precautionary approach to medical informatics.
... »Gori discusses on the topic of AI governance and human rights at Italo-Brazilian symposium (1 Feb 2023)
Postdoctoral researcher Gianmarco Gori has discussed the paper ‘Los derechos humanos como conductor ético para el avance de la inteligencia artificial’ written and presented by Prof. Wilson Engelmann (Universidade do Vale do Rio Dos Sinos - UNISINOS) at the Italo-Brazilian Doctoral Symposium, University of Florence.
... »Gori teaches at Winter ELSA Law School on New Technologies and Artificial Intelligence Law, Brussels (30 Jan 2023)
Postdoctoral researcher Gianmarco Gori has given a lecture ‘Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (and) Law’ to the students of the Winter ELSA Law School on New Technologies and Artificial Intelligence Law. In his lecture, Gori has stressed the need to look at the challenges currently posed by AI by adopting a historical perspective. In this light, he has illustrated a set of elements which recur in Western legal thought, such as the crises of legal information, the distrust of legal interpreters (e.g., breakfast jurisprudence), etc. Gori has examined how such problems, and the way in which they have been framed, constitute the background against which legal automation is conceptualised as a possible solution for the problems of law. In this perspective, Gori has discussed how different understandings of law and its problems have been articulated in the context of Jurimetrics, GOFAIL (Good Old-Fashioned AI and Law), and are now addressed under the contemporary data-driven paradigm.
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