RightsCon Toronto 2018

We are on the verge of one of the greatest paradigm shifts in human history. Research on Artificial Intelligence is enabling humanity to create autonomous intelligent software agents that can currently perform and learn new tasks without human guidance, observation or intervention, supplanting humans in decision­ making processes. This is already the case for military weapons platforms know as Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) that can kill and destroy a target without human intervention. There are however also a plethora of peace time uses and risks of autonomous agents including potential mass disinformation, criminal profiling and the potential management of population amid resource scarcity to name a few. The panel aims to address some of the following questions:
" What if fake news and internet trolls are generated by increasingly autonomous software?
" Would autonomous criminal profiling turn the presumption of Innocence upside-down?
" If code represents the law of cyberspace, and computer software potentially interferes with citizens' rights and integrity, shouldn't their use be regulated by a democratic process?
" The language of human vs. machine decision-making: are we blurring important distinctions?
" Do we have a moral duty not to create 'intelligent' systems that could potentially become a risk for humanity?

This session is organized by the ICT for Peace Foundation and the Zurich Hub for Ethics and Technology, Switzerland, as part of an on-going process of looking at AI, LAWS and Peace-time threats