New Spring 2017 Course: “Regulation & Emerging Technologies”

This new special topics course introduces students to the main tools used to evaluate the impacts of new regulation, and then focuses specifically on new technologies such as fracking, precision medicine, robotics, artificial intelligence and human-machine interaction. How can we enable innovation without compromising privacy, security, civil rights, pluralism and other important public policy goals? How can we appraise the possible economic, social and environmental impacts of these new technologies, and enable constant learning, monitoring and retrospective evaluation of relevant regulation? What should be the relative weight of short- and long-term impacts? Should governments use algorithms to regulate technology, and if yes when? This course discusses these and other issues, in a highly interactive way. It is being launched by the Kenan Institute as many governments around the world discuss the ethics of algorithms and artificial intelligence, as well as the best way to regulate new medicines, fracking, drones, search engines, chatbots, etc. After a general introductory part, students will be allowed to propose topics and focus on those technologies that meet their interest in a final essay. Guest lecturers and scheduled debates, plus participation in seminars and public events will complete this comprehensive introduction to “regulating the future”.