The QUT Global Law, Science and Technology Seminar Series aims to bring together national and international speakers who will explore the personal, societal and governance dimensions of solving real world problems which are influenced by, and through the interactions of science, technology and the law.

The series will host speakers who think about ‘technology' and ‘science’ as broadly construed to refer to methods of framing or interacting with the world, and that enable the critical and imaginative questioning of the technical, science, environmental and health dimensions of law and life.

In this second seminar of our 2022 series, Dr Neville Rochow QC will reflect on what it means to be human in a digital world.

When: Thursday, 26 May - 1:00pm (AEST-BNE time)

Where: Zoom - Meeting ID: 898 0089 6423 / Password: 593123

https://qut.zoom.us/s/89800896423

Abstract: Questions arise constantly regarding how we, as modern humanity, should respond to what is referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The seminar will present a series of issues - ‘contemplations’ if you will - on which we as educated and hopefully well-informed humans should be reflecting to consider an imminent future that is already present in which the idea of ‘human’ may either be preserved or radically change. Such issues include ‘dignity’, ‘humanity’, ‘belief’, ‘conviction’, ‘sin’, ‘love’; whether we should accord legal ‘personhood’ to artifices that are bereft of feeling and conscience; and that are agnostic as to human feeling and conscience.

Having created corporate gods in the express image of our desires, our vanity then extends to creating computers and androids in our image; ‘tools’ that are capable of simulating and emulating our human characteristics. Yet with all of these advances, it seems our own knowledge and power over our own destinies are somehow diminished; and we have not even decided how to distinguish between humanity and its simulacra.

With warnings of an impending Superintelligence revolution that could, in time, render humanity, as we now understand it, redundant and even superfluous; and while Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft continue to act as corporate digital gods whose ubiquitous presence, constant surveillance, copious recording of our every ‘sin’ according to their commandments – meting out punishment for transgression; thus espousing the appearance of being omniscient and omnipotent – we face questions not considered by previous generations that were not ruled by algorithms.

Drawing upon recent research, I will pose questions that help us contemplate whether we are taking our humanity and its rights sufficiently seriously in times when it is so critically important to do so.