Christian Barry and Seth Lazar consider what justifies requiring some people to bear costs for the sake of others, in the public health response to COVID-19.
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In this conference paper, Dr Will Bateman presented a technically-embedded analysis of doctrinal legal issue which arise in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by regulators, government administrators and other legal actors. The paper was delivered to the collected Justices of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, with special guest Justices from the High Court of Australia and the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
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This article, in US magazine Barron's, explores how to think about the privacy risks of app-based contact-tracing in the age of big data, arguing that even if tech companies choose wisely and justly, the 'laws' of their operating systems cannot be legitimate. Democratic institutions are the only means we've discovered to legitimate the use of power in complex social systems.
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In a paper published in Plos One, Colin Klein and co-authors shed light on the online world of conspiracy theorists, by studying a large set of user comments. Their key findings were that people who eventually engage with conspiracy forums differ from those who don’t in both where and what they post. The patterns of difference suggest they actively seek out sympathetic communities, rather than passively stumbling into problematic beliefs.
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In this article, co-authored with epidemiologist Meru Sheel, Seth Lazar questions whether tech companies or democratically-elected governments should decide how to weigh privacy against public health, when fundamental rights are not at stake.
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Claire Benn and Seth Lazar recorded an interview with Rashna Farrukh for the Philosopher’s Zone podcast on Radio National. The theme: moral skill and artificial intelligence. Does the automation of moral labour threaten to diminish our capacity for moral judgment, much as automation in other areas has negatively impacted human skill?
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This chapter explores the alignment of the EU data protection and consumer protection policy agendas through a discussion of the reference to the Unfair Contract Terms Directive in Recital 42 of the General Data Protection Regulation.
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Colin Klein was interviewed by ABC Drive and 2CC Canberra about conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19 and the role of online information platforms such as twitter in propagating misinformation.
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This paper presents in-depth measurements on the effects of Twitter data sampling across different timescales and different subjects. It calls attention to noises and potential biases in social data, and provides a few tools to measure Twitter sampling effects.
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Professor Toni Erskine, HMI Discovery Lead, presented at the workshop on 'Military Applications of AI, International Security, and Arms Control', hosted by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, convened by David Danks (Carnegie Mellon University), Paul Meyer (Simon Fraser University), and Giaocomo Paoli (UNIDIR). The workshop was held on the 30th and 31st of January 2020 in Santa Monica, California.
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Playtest demonstrates that that when our fantasies feel real, and have the power to hurt, they are no longer just a game. Virtual reality can build a bridge between what seems real and what is real, and this means its power to scare us silly is not just novel: it’s revolutionary.
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Together with Stanford's Rob Reich, Seth Lazar co-convened a session of the Human-Centred AI Institute's fall conference on AI Ethics, Policy and Governance, on 'New Directions in AI Ethics'.
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