Rise of the Robots: The Harm Behind the Hype (FULLY BOOKED)

The current wave of alarmist hype around Artificial Intelligence focuses on the potential for existential risk in the future use of Artificial Intelligence imagining a dystopian future when AI takes over from human beings.  For marginalised communities the risk is not this dystopian future.  It is the harm suffered now.

Globally, AI used in and by public and private entities has resulted in denial of access to welfare benefits, access to housing, employment and over-policing and discrimination in migration owing to systemic bias in data and parameter setting.

NGOs and Lawyers report difficulties in even discovering whether algorithms are being used by public services let alone obtaining evidence and challenging the outcomes. The direction of travel in regulation has shown a government committed to reducing or removing some existing safeguards and reluctant to regulate to ensure transparency, accountability or provide access to an available remedy.

This practical workshop was designed both to explore and give participants tools to:

• Discover how and where Automated Decision Making and Artificial Intelligence is being used in decision making by public authorities.
• Develop legal strategies to challenge unfair algorithm use and decisions. 
• Identify and gather evidence to support their cases.

This workshop was for researchers and legal practitioners interested in challenging public authorities on their unfair use of AI and algorithms. This event was part of a series by PLP, the last two events took place in 2021 and 2020 are available to view here and here respectively.

Programme

13:30 Registration

14.00 Introduction to Automated Decision Making and AI, public law and discrimination - Why should we care? - Shameem Ahmad, CEO, Public Law Project

14:10  Part 1: Where and how is AI being used by government? What tools do we have at our disposal to challenge unfair use or decision making?

• Current state of play with AI/ADM and Government - Mia Leslie, Public Law Project

• Human Rights and risk assessments - Louise Hooper, Garden Court Chambers

• Discrimination and Equality - Nicola Braganza KC, Garden Court Chambers & Ariane Adam, Human Dignity Trust & Yara Ali-Adib, Equality and Human Rights Commission

• AI and Product Liability - Abigail Holt, Garden Court Chambers

15:30  Break 

15:55  Part 2: Evidence Gathering - Mia Leslie, Public Law Project, Ravi Naik, AWO & Shauna Concannon, Durham University

• Effective use of Freedom of Information Act requests

• Resorting to the Information Commissioner's Office

• Using technology to gather evidence and test results 

16:25 Break

16:45 Workshops

Facilitated workshops will be held to implement learning and strategies facilitated by lawyers and NGOs using real world examples and data on the TAG register. 

Recognising that this is a developing area of law we also encourage participants to bring and share their own experiences, questions and challenges.  We hope to learn from each other what has been going well and what has not worked. We envisage these to be hands on and if there is anything in particular you would like to discuss please do not hesitate to contact us in advance.

Delegates are invited to select one of the facilitated workshops below:

• Immigration - Bijan Hoshi, Garden Court Chambers & Public Law Project & Jonah Mendelsohn, Privacy International & Monique Hawkins, the3million

• Welfare - Tim Baldwin, Garden Court Chambers, Adrian Berry, Garden Court Chambers & Caroline Selman, Public Law Project

• Education - Louise Hooper, Garden Court Chambers & Jen Persson, Defend Digital Me & Kruakae Pothong, LSE visiting research fellow

18:10 Wrap up and Conclusions

18:30 Networking Drinks