About the workshop
Transformative general-purpose technologies have resulted in the “fourth industrial revolution”: Blockchain, Big Data and Data Science, gene editing through CRISPR, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning. Robots are leading to rapid changes in the way services are offered, products are manufactured, and commerce is made, leading to the emergence of new industries/spheres of economic activity. Data collection is very extensive. There are legitimate concerns on privacy violations, and a need to a regulatory solution to guard privacy without killing the benefits of digital platforms. A new key area of business activity, platforms, bring together disparate sets of users, such as cardholder and merchants in a credit card platform or drivers and customers in Uber. Currently, the five most valuable firms in the world (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft) are platforms. The development of blockchain and decentralised ledger technology may challenge the dominance of digital platforms and lead to a more decentralised economic system. “Winner-take-most” competition with the emergence of “superstar firms” may raise competition concerns but has also arguably led to a decline in labour’s share. Automation may relieve humans from certain tasks, so that they can spend time on more valuable work, or it can lead to the splitting up of activity previously exercised by humans in various activities, some of which may be automated. It can eventually replace an entire job once performed by a human, thus having important implications on employment in certain economic sectors and/or social inclusion.

Legal systems have been conspicuously slow in adapting to the needs of society and to the development of new technologies. When, even with delay, law reacts to societal changes, it usually has just a restricting function: it prohibits rather than enables certain types of activities. Thus, the law is a rather poor instrument in dealing with the cataclysmic changes brought by the very rapid developments in technology. These touch upon all aspects of social life, ranging from issues of employment and intellectual creation, or more generally the creation of resources, to new modes of data and AI-driven governance, affecting multiple environments, reaching from the streets and hospitals to the financial system and the battlefield. For the law to remain relevant, it will have to rapidly adapt to these challenges, so it can remain at the epicenter rather than the periphery of social and business activity. It is also important that technology entrepreneurs be cognizant of the crucial importance of the legal system and of the necessity of adaptive changes to it when designing their business models, since ignoring the role of the law may jeopardize their innovative efforts and disruptive innovations. The second edition of the "Artificial cosmoi and the Law" conference aims to explore the interactions between law and new General Purpose Technologies, such as blockchain, Artificial Intelligence and gene-editing, but also more broadly to reflect on the legal construction of digital capitalism.

Workshop Schedule
9.15: Panel 1: Law, Regulation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution
10.45: Coffee break
11.00: Panel 2: Regulating crypto-assets
12.30: Lunch break
13.30: Panel 3: Regulating Digital Eco-systems (platforms and beyond)
15.00: Coffee break
15.30: Panel 4: Regulating Blockchain

Speakers

• Julie E. Cohen, Georgetown University Law Center (TBC)
• Carsten Gerner Beurle, UCL
  
• David Grewal, Yale Law School
  
• Hamid Ekbia, University of Indiana
  
• Ioannis Lianos, UCL
  
• Yiannis Golias, Athens Polytechnnic
  
• Nick Economides, NYU Stern Business School
• Nikos Vetas, IOBE
• Sotiris Georganas, City University London
  
• Mihalis Kritikos, Policy Analyst, European Parliament
  
• George Flouris, Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FO.R.T.H.)- Institute of Computer Science (I.C.S.)
  
• Michael Jacobides, LBS
  
• George Dimitropoulos, HBKU
  
• Alexandros Seretakis, Trinity College Dublin
  
• Emilios Avgouleas, Edinburgh University
  
• Aggelos Kiayias, Edninburgh University
  
• Angela Walch, St Mary School of Law
  
• Ioannis Lianos, UCL
• Alexandra Mikroulea, UoA
  
• Manos Mastromanolis, UoA
  
• Christos Hadjiemmanuil, Professor of International and European Monetary and Financial Institutions at the University of Piraeus & Visiting Professor, Department of Law, LSE
• Dimitris Tzouganatos, Professor of Competition Law at the University of Athens, Faculty of Law

View the full programme and background information to this event from the UCL Laws website at:
http://www.laws.ucl.ac.uk/event/artificial-cosmoi-and-the-law-2/