PUBLIC TALK: Legal Humanism and the Automation of Everyday Life

A public lecture by Christophe Lazaro, Associate Professor of Law & Society, Centre for Philosophy of Law, University of Louvain and 2020 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

An entirely new fauna composed of entities, which are said to be smart and autonomous, progressively colonizes our everyday life (prosthetics, watches, clothes, tablets, vehicles, smart homes, etc). The emergence of these objects might cause a profound anthropological shift by radically transforming the nature of our environment in a fully automated technosphere.

This public lecture aims at analysing the legal consequences of the current process of automation of everyday life on legal humanism. Specifically, Professor Lazaro will explore three major tensions, which radically challenge legal humanism, by altering its fundamental fictional figures: the person, the subject, and the individual. By examining the tensions between (i) human and artefact (person), (ii) autonomy and paternalism (subject), and (iii) equality and singularity (individual), he will identify, beyond binary oppositions, a set of parameters, which could guide the legal and ethical understanding of these new “uncanny” entities.

Christophe Lazaro, Associate Professor of Law & Society at the Centre for Philosophy of Law of UCL, is an expert in interdisciplinary research on the legal and social impacts of new technologies on human agency and subjectivity (prosthetics, robotics, artificial intelligence).