Co-Designing Technology and Policy for High-Risk Technologies

Since the Alpha-Go shock of March 2016, global public discourse on information technologies has taken a distinct turn. Although the last two decades have seen numerous political, economic or social changes sparked by digital technologies including globalization and the Arab Spring, the recent technological development driving the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is increasingly casting doubt on the human control over technologies that has been taken for granted since the modern times. This lecture discusses how emerging technologies making latest headlines – such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, autonomous vehicles, drones, blockchain, or virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR) – are portrayed in the popular media as well as policy documents, focusing on the ambivalent nature of public perceptions of high-risk technologies. Introducing the notion of co-designing of technology and policy as pioneered by the World Economic Forum, the lecture explores the possibility of agile governance of high-risk technologies with a few real-life examples of developing technological and policy solutions simultaneously to address uncertainties inherent in emerging technologies.