From 19 to 20 October, 2019, the German-Southeast Asian Center of Excellence for Public Policy and Good Governance (CPG) based at the Thammasat University Faculty of Law, will have its 10th annual conference. This year’s theme is Governing the Future: Digitalization, Artificial Intelligence, Dataism. The venue for this year’s event is Lebua at State Tower Bangkok on Silom Road, Bang Rak. The Thammasat University Library owns several books about artificial intelligence; robots; and related subjects. Members of the TU community who wish to attend are invited to register at this link. 

As the CPG website notes:

• Presentations might address the phenomenology of transformative developments such as superintelligence, quantum technology, microbots, hybrids, misaligned AI and their impact on governance and power as well as the demand, proposals and obstacles to regulate them.

Global governance and geopolitical competition

• What are the outlooks for the governance and regulation of the cyberspace as a common good and artificial intelligence as a common challenge respectively? The latter aspect includes the issue of killer robots in particular. To which avail will the fracturing of the internet into multiple, politically determined cyberspaces develop? In how far will global dynamics of geopolitical competition impact on the development of the cyberspace and artificial intelligence concerning in particular the already emerging race dynamics? What is the role of large corporations in terms of global governance and international law in the areas of digitalization and AI?

State power, government and constitutional politics

• How does and will AI and digitalization influence state power, democracy and government? Issues at stake are pervasive surveillance and analytical powers, practices and regimes, the ensuing implications for rights & democracy and the social discipling and ultimately conditioning of citizens to subjects. Points of discussion might be current as well as future scenarios such as social point systems as they are being explored in China, data policies that favor the national industry over the interest of individual citizens with governments pooling and sharing data among business with India providing interesting insights but also suggestions to replace politicians with randomly selected peoples or even AI.

Law and governance

• Concerning the arena of law and governance topics of concern are general approaches to govern and regulate AI and digitalization, present and expectable limits to internet freedom and the issue of fake news as an ambiguous phenomenon to both the control and weaponization of information. Interesting legal problems emerge with predictive AI and algorithmic sentencing in the judicial field, with questions of legal barriers to empower AI including for example lethal autonomous weapon systems as well as the liability of robots and AI and how it might influence the concept of law. A future related question is the transfer of human rights to robots and the acknowledgment of robot rights respectively, both as strategy to humanize AI and to increase general acceptance as well as a fundamental ethical problem with profound implications on the conception of the humane and human dignity. Concerning security matters it might not only be asked about the future and impact of cybersecurity in terms of national security but also what is the impact of the current disruptive military advances in AI and robotics from intelligence to nuclear weapons systems on military strategy and global governance?

Economical & social issues

• Lastly, it might be explored how the digital economy and boost in automation will reshape the future of jobs and, more important, the social condition. Matters that might be discussed in this context are also complementary policies such as an universal basic income and the impact of digitalization and AI on global inequality regarding questions of distributional justice in particular also with regard of AI & healthcare.

Speakers will include Professor Nicholas Agar of the School of History, Philosophy, Political Science and International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington. Dr. Russell Buchan, Senior Lecturer in International Law at the School of Law, The University of Sheffield and Dr. Massimo Durante, Professor in Philosophy of Law at the Department of Law of the University of Turin, Italy,  will also make presentations. Dr. Durante’s main fields of research concern the relation between Law and Ethics, Legal Informatics, Computer and Information Ethics. He has been involved in many research projects in the fields of Philosophy of Law, Legal Informatics, and ICTs policies. He is also currently interested in Governance Theory and Digital Democracy.

Among other presenters will be Dean Anthony Elliott of the Hawke EU Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, University of South Australia and Dr. Robert Geraci of the Department of Religious Studies of Manhattan College, New York City, USA.

Dr. Geraci has posted on his university homepage:

I’m pretty sure that everyone loves robots, which is why I’ve written a book about them. People love games too, so I wrote another book. After that, I resucitated my old interest in Indian culture and religion to spend time at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and compose a new book about religion and science in India.  I’m also interested in the toadstool circles, the ancient temples, the soaring cathedrals of our religious imagination. Likewise, the dark tunnels of mining and rapid transit. I visit mountains, deserts, temples, laboratories, factories, virtual realities…the places where magic enters the world.

There will also be contributions from Professor Janina Loh of the Department of Philosophy of the University of Vienna, Austria. Professor Loh’s homepage observes that she has published several articles on robot ethics and is currently working on an Introduction to Robot Ethics (Suhrkamp 2019). Loh is still interested in the issue of responsibility – now especially in the field of technology, man-machine-interaction, big data, hybrid systems, and new media – and elaborates on a concept of responsibility networks.

Professor Elke Schwarz of the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom, will also be speaking. As her university profile observes, her research focuses on the political and ethical implications of new technologies, with a focus on digital technologies and autonomous systems. In 2018, she published her monograph Death Machines: The Ethics of Violent Technologies.

Professor Michael Selgelid of the Monash Bioethics Centre at Monash University, Australia, is another distinguished contributor to the conference. Professor Selgelid a bioethicist and moral philosopher known for his contributions to public health ethics, as well as issues related to biotechnology and infectious diseases.

Professor Erik Vermeulen of Tilburg Law and Economics Center at Tilburg University, the Netherlands and Professor John Zeleznikow of Victoria University Business School, Melbourne, Australia, are also listed among attendees. Among Professor Zeleznikow’s research specialties are applications of machine learning and probabilistic reasoning; artificial intelligence and law; data mining and sport; dispute resolution; and information technology and decision-making.

Governing the Future will be chaired by, among others, Associate Professor Kittisak Prokati, Thammasat University Faculty of Law; Professor Niels Petersen of the Faculty of Law at Münster University, Germany; and Professor Moritz Bälz of the Faculty of Law at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. 

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)