AI, Robots and the Law

Tuesday, 15 November 2023

Artificial intelligence and robots are being used in virtually every industry, healthcare, finance,  transport, energy, utilities, manufacturing, and retail services, creating huge legal and ethical challenges for lawyers and their clients.  But can they solve real problems? And can we trust robots? Can we let them take the wheel? Or be carers for the elderly? How do we ensure that they act in socially acceptable manner?  Are they able develop the cognitive capabilities and the emotional and social intelligence necessary to with humans and other robots? Can robots become sentient? Do they have rights that humans should observe?

Professor Mary-Anne Williams is a leading authority on AI and social robots with transdisciplinary expertise in decision science, human-AI interaction, disruptive innovation, ethics and law. She has been the Michael J Crouch Chair in Innovation at UNSW since 2020, Director of the new UNSW Business AI Lab, and Deputy Director of the recently launched UNSW AI Institute. Prior to that, she was the founder and director for 18 years of the Innovation and Enterprise Research Lab (The Magic Lab) in the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute at UTS, creating Australia's leading social robotics research group. She has received multiple awards for her work, which has included creating the first robot soccer team in 2001 which became Social Robotics World Champions at RoboCup 2019.  She has worked with the UN on the risks and challenges of AI and with industry leaders, such as Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Inc. She has a PhD in Computer Science (USyd) and an LL.M (University of Edinburgh). She is a Fellow at Stanford University, at the Australian Computer Society, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and the Association for the Advancement of AI (AAAI).

Angela Bowne SC will chair the event.