Daniel Seng is Associate Professor of Law at the School of Computing, at the National University of Singapore. He graduate from Stanford University’s doctorak program in Empirical Sciences and the Law (JSD). His areas of expertise are intellectual property, information technology, law, machine learning, NLP and quantitative legal analysis.
Dr. Seng visited Duke Kunshan University as a guest of the Planetary Ethics and Artificial Intelligence Lab (PETAL). He delivered a university colloquium that was well attended by DKU students and faculty. Afterwards he met privately with PETAL student researchers.
In private discussions with him in our lab, Dr. Seng highlighted his concerns about introducing artificial intelligence into our life. He has deep concerns about algorithmic editing of self-driving cars, because, in some extreme cases, some cars have to choose between hitting several adults and several children, which is equivalent to giving different values to human life. He firmly believes that human life cannot be quantified. However, cars cannot run and advance without making a choice, so the introduction of driverless cars forces us to face these thorny problems at the same time. As a scientific researcher and a legal expert, he is doing his best to reduce the impact of the unstoppable technological force on human values. He is trying to balance the development of science and technology with human happiness through scientific research and legal analysis.
As China develops its AI capabilities intensively and rapidly over the next years, the ethical and legal issues that Dr. Seng’s research raises will be of critical importance.
