Law and Ethics in Digital Society

Dozent: Prof. Dr. Philipp Hacker This course will highlight the ethical and legal challenges for emerging and evolving technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital platforms, and blockchain. As is well-known, these technologies not only create novel opportunities, but also engender specific risks. The course will address the ethical and the regulatory framework in the EU, with an emphasis on market regulation. In doing so, we will not only ask how regulation constrains digital technologies, but also if technical tools can be harnessed to facilitate ethical and legal outcomes. Weekly workshop formats will leave ample room for an analysis of concrete cases, and for jointly discussing novel solutions to ethical and legal challenges. Hence, we will not only analyze positive law and comment on recent jurisprudence by the CJEU, but also discuss policy strategies to update regulation and to square digital technologies with human autonomy. To qualify for 6 ECTS credits, students need to give one presentation and write one seminar paper comprising of 3000 words. The presentations will be allocated in the first class. The deadline for the paper is March 26, 2023. In addition, students are expected to regularly attend the course and to participate in the group exercises/workshop parts (see also next section). The course is open to all students of the ENS and forms part of Module A. No specific prior knowledge of law or ethics is required. The working language for the entire course will be English.