Dr Sylvie Delacroix, Reader in Legal Theory and Ethics at UCL Faculty of Laws and UCL Computer Science, was invited by The Law Society to talk about the ethical implications of our increasing reliance on computer systems within the legal professions on 14 June 2017.
Dr Delacroix’s talk focused on two key questions: firstly, she asked under what conditions wholesale replacement (as opposed to augmentation) of particular professions by computer systems may be deemed both desirable and legitimate. She called for an alternative to the dominant, consequentialist framework and highlighted the constraints that stem from the particular nature of professional responsibility.
Secondly, she emphasised the active role we all have to play in contributing to the design choices underlying the systems that will play and ever greater role in supporting lawyers in their delivery of quality services. Some of these choices will necessarily be value-loaded. Can one preserve an understanding of ethics as a “work in progress” while at the same time seeking to incorporate moral values as “system constraints”?
‘Call for legislation to govern AI,’ Dr Sylvie Delacroix in The Law Society Gazette