2021 CIBEL Annual Keynote: Who is holding the baby on digital assets? Ethics in data, AI and robotics

Abstract

Lawmakers around the world are playing catch-up to account for new business and economic activities enabled by emerging technologies. As our identities and “assets” shift into the digital realm, the absence of a mature legal framework leaves us exposed to the risk of real world harm. Without adequate legal protection in the digital sphere, businesses must rely on ethical principles as a robust and proactive tool to inform business decision making in the face of digital transformation. Stewardship model and ESG reporting will be explored. Other questions include: How are digital assets relevant to the future of international business?  What new economic activity do they give rise to? How are these new economic activities to be regulated? What is the role of ethics in responding as a society to emerging technologies? How can ethics guide decisions that businesses make in relation to data, AI and robotics?

In the 2021 CIBEL Annual Keynote, Natasha Blycha, Managing Director at Stirling & Rose and former Global Head of Digital Law at Herbert Smith Freehills, will share her insights on who is holding the baby on digital assets, ethics in data, AI and robotics, and the stewardship model and ESG reporting.

Speaker

Ms Natasha Blycha is the Managing Director of the law firm Stirling & Rose. She has previously led HSF’s global digital law group with team members in the US, UK, Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia. She specialises in smart legal contract advisory and creation and distributed ledger technology. Natasha advises on regulation and governance of digital assets, platforms and applications, digital ethics and human rights policies.
 
Natasha is a Director and founder of the Digital Law Association and sits on the Australian Law Council’s Digital Commerce Committee.
 
She has lived and worked in the United States, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Host

Professor Andrew Lynch is the Dean of the UNSW Faculty of Law & Justice. He has previously served as Head of School and Deputy Dean. He teaches and researches in the field of Australian constitutional law. His research concentrates on the topics of federalism, judicial dissent, judicial appointments reform, and legal responses to terrorism.

Andrew is an author of Blackshield & Williams’ Australian Constitutional Law and Theory (6th ed, 2014; 7th ed, 2018), Australia's Greatest Judicial Crisis - The Tim Carmody Affair (2016), Inside Australia’s Anti-terrorism Laws and Trials (2014), What Price Security? Taking Stock of Australia’s Anti-Terror Laws (2006), and Equity and Trusts (2001 and 2005). He is a co-editor of the books Law and Liberty in the War on Terror (2007), Counter-Terrorism and Beyond: The Culture of Law and Justice After 9/11 (2010), Tomorrow’s Federation: Reforming Australian Government (2012) and the editor of Great Australian Dissents (2016).

Between 2008-2013, Andrew was the Director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at UNSW and he continues to work on research housed within the Centre’s Judiciary Project. He is a member of the Council of the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law. 

Commentators

Professor Toby Walsh is an ARC Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of AI at UNSW and CSIRO Data61, and adjunct professor at QUT. He is a strong advocate for limits to ensure AI is used to improve our lives, having spoken at the UN, and to heads of state, parliamentary bodies, company boards and many other bodies on this topic. He is a Fellow of the Australia Academy of Science, and was named on the international "Who's Who in AI" list of influencers. He has authored two books on AI for a general audience, the most recent entitled "2062: The World that AI Made".

Professor Lyria Bennett Moses is Director of the Allens Hub for Technology, Law and Innovation and a Professor in the Faculty of Law and Justice at UNSW Sydney. She is also co-lead of the Law and Policy theme in the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre and Faculty lead in the UNSW Institute for Cyber Security. Lyria's research explores issues around the relationship between technology and law, including the types of legal issues that arise as technology changes, how these issues are addressed in Australia and other jurisdictions, and the problems of treating “technology” as an object of regulation. Recently, she has been working on legal and policy issues associated with the use of artificial intelligence, the appropriate legal framework for enhancing cyber security, and oversight for law enforcement intelligence. She is on the NSW Information and Privacy Advisory Committee, the Executive Committee of the Australian Chapter of the IEEE’s Society for the Social Implications of Technology, and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law.

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