How to programme the future

Karlo Ressler | 10th January 2022 | Comment

Modern technologies could make the world a better place - or they could do the exact opposite

Ours is an era of new possibilities, but also new dangers. The fourth industrial revolution means the potential for human rights violations are now greater than ever before. And nowhere are the pros and cons of society’s digital transformation more vivid than in the fierce debate on artificial intelligence regulation that’s rocking the European Union. When IRL doesn’t quite translate AI will alter the world radically: it’s so omnipresent that we’re often oblivious to it. Anything that touches our lives so dramatically needs to be regulated. As tech is being designed, the rules that govern it are being written. In the EU, a founding principle guiding rule writing is that nothing should be permitted in the digital world that’s not permitted in the real world. Although this is an uncontroversial principle, in practice it is impossible to directly translate laws that have been designed for the physical world. It’s a balancing act Regulators must ask themselves two questions. First, does th...

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