Discussants and Moderators: Day Two – April 2nd

We Robot 2016 presentations feature Discussants and Moderators who are in integral part of the conference. Discussants are the lead speakers in their session and are responsible for presenting the main themes of the paper and offering their views. Moderators are the ringmasters of their panels.

Matt Beane is the We Robot 2016 Discussant for Aurelia Tamò and Christoph Lutz’s paper Privacy and healthcare robots – An ANT analysis on Saturday, April 2nd at 8:30 AM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Matt, a PhD candidate in spring 2016 from MIT Sloan School of Management, is an expert in human-robot interaction in the workplace. At MIT, Matt has focused on problems and opportunities associated with integrating robots into complex collaborative work. He has completed projects on robotic surgery, robotic materials transport, and robotic telepresence in healthcare, elder care and business. His work on robotic telepresence in a post-surgical ICU was recently published in Organization Science, one of two top management journals focused on novel organizational phenomena. He was selected in 2012 as a Human Robot Interaction Pioneer, and is a regular contributor to MIT’s Technology Review and Robohub. Matt has taught a variety of courses at MIT; his “Business of Robotics” course regularly attracts students and industry experts. Before MIT Sloan, Matt was a principal in a management consulting firm focused on group and team dynamics.

Harry Surden is the We Robot 2016 Discussant for Aaron Mannes’ paper Institutional Options for Robot Governance on Saturday, April 2nd at 10:00 AM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Harry Surden is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School. He joined the faculty in 2008. His scholarship centers upon intellectual property law with a substantive focus on patents and copyright, information privacy law, legal informatics and legal automation, and the application of computer technology within the legal system. Prior to joining CU, Professor Surden was a resident fellow at the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics (CodeX) at Stanford Law School. In that capacity, Professor Surden conducted interdisciplinary research with collaborators from the Stanford School of Engineering exploring the application of computer technology towards improving the legal system. He was also a member of the Stanford Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse and the director of the Computer Science and Law Initiative. Professor Surden was law clerk to the Honorable Martin J. Jenkins of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. He received his law degree from Stanford Law School with honors and was the recipient of the Stanford Law Intellectual Property Writing Award. Prior to law school, Professor Surden worked as a software engineer for Cisco Systems and Bloomberg L.P. He received his undergraduate degree with honors from Cornell University. Professor Surden is an Affiliated Faculty Member at The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics (CodeX).

Mary Anne Franks is the We Robot 2016 Discussant for Peter Asaro’s paper Will #BlackLivesMatter to RoboCop? on Saturday, April 2nd at 11:30 AM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Dr. Mary Anne Franks is a Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law, where she teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, First Amendment law, family law, and a course on Law, Policy, and Technology. Before joining the UM faculty, Dr. Franks was a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago School of Law and a Lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard University. Dr. Franks received her J.D. in 2007 from Harvard Law School and her D.Phil in 2004 and M.Phil in 2001 from Oxford University, where she studied on a Rhodes Scholarship. Her areas of research include free speech, online abuse, discrimination, and gun violence. She is also the Legislative & Tech Policy Director and Vice-President of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), a non-profit organization dedicated to challenging online harassment and abuse. In that capacity, Professor Franks advises tech industry leaders on privacy and abuse issues and has helped legislators in more than two dozen US states and the federal government draft legislation to protect sexual privacy. She is also a co-producer of the documentary Hot Girls Wanted, which examines the “professional amateur” porn industry. Her academic scholarship has appeared in publications such as the California Law Review and the UCLA Law Review; her popular press publications include The Atlantic, the Guardian, TIME Magazine, and the Huffington Post.

Margot E. Kaminski is the We Robot 2016 Discussant for Helen Norton and Toni Massaro’s paper Siriously? Free Speech Rights for Artificial Intelligence on Saturday, April 2nd at 3:15 PM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Margot E. Kaminski is an Assistant Professor of Law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. She teaches, researches, and writes on law and technology. Her work has focused on privacy, speech, and online civil liberties, in addition to international intellectual property law and legal issues raised by AI and robotics. Recently, much of her work has focused on domestic drones (UAS). Kaminski is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School. While at Yale, she co-founded the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic (MFIA), a law school clinic dedicated to increasing government transparency, defending the essential work of news gatherers, and protecting freedom of expression. She was a law clerk to the Honorable Andrew J. Kleinfeld of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Fairbanks, Alaska. She worked at a literary agency prior to law school, and has worked at Creative Commons and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. From 2011-2014 Kaminski served as the executive director of theInformation Society Project at Yale Law School, an intellectual center addressing the implications of new information technologies for law and society. She remains an affiliated fellowof the Yale ISP.

Ian R. Kerr is the We Robot 2016 Discussant for William D. Smart’s paper What do We Really Know About Robots and the Law? on Saturday, April 2nd at 4:30 PM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Ian Kerr is recognized as an international expert in emerging law and technology issues. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law, and Technology at the University of Ottawa. He is currently teaching a seminar course on the philosophical, ethical & legal implications of robots and society entitled, “The Robotic Laws.” He teaches contracts as well as a unique upper-year seminar offered each year during the month of January in Puerto Rico that brings students from very different legal traditions together to exchange culture, values, and ideas and to unite in the study of technology law issues of global importance (TechnoRico). His devotion to teaching has earned six awards and citations, including the Bank of Nova Scotia Award of Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the University of Western Ontario’s Faculty of Graduate Studies’ Award of Teaching Excellence, and the University of Ottawa’s AEECLSS Teaching Excellence Award. Kerr was educated at the University of Alberta and the University of Western Ontario. In addition to co-authoring the widely used business law text, Managing the Law (co-authored by Mitchell McInnes, Anthony VanDuzer, and Chi Carmody), he has published in the areas of ethical and legal aspects of digital copyright, automated electronic commerce, artificial intelligence, cybercrime, nanotechnology, internet regulation, ISP and intermediary liability, online defamation, pre-natal injuries and unwanted pregnancies. His current program of research includes two large projects: (i) On the Identity Trail, focusing on the impact of information and authentication technologies on our identity and our right to be anonymous; and (ii) An Examination of Digital Copyright, focusing on various aspects of the current effort to reform Canadian copyright legislation, including the implications of such reform on fundamental Canadian values including privacy and freedom of expression. Professor Kerr is also the originator of Kerr’s Postulate which states that in any discussion of law and technology, the longer a discussion continues the probability of including a reference to The Matrix approaches one. Kerr’s Postulate is a play on Godwin’s Law stemming from academic research on the man/machine merger andartificial intelligence. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Ottawa, he held a joint appointment in the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Information & Media Studies and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario.