Professor Lilian Edwards, Professor in the field of Internet Law at Strathclyde University will be giving a seminar on 17th March entitled 'Slave to the algorithm? Awaiting the Law Cavalry.'  The seminar is hosted by the Department of Computing and takes place in the Jack Cole building room 1.33b. 

The abstract of the talk is as follows:

There is considerable current concern about the decisions made wholly or partly by algorithms in our digital "big data society": decisions which now include:

• hiring, promoting and firing in the employment arena
• profiling for surveillance by law enforcement as well as by private companies for tracking and marketing
• dynamic alteration of pricing and access to goods
• assessment of worth for admission to school, college or professions
• health interventions and welfare distributions
• access to news and political comment on social media

And many more.

This talk will discuss the underlying problems around algorithmic governance, including inter alia discrimination, social sorting, lack of transparency, restriction of human agency, acontextuality and other possibilities for error, which have received a great deal of publicity lately; and then more unusually, starts to conjecture what legal solutions may be available in the UK and EU to complement technological and other governance solutions.

All are welcome.