Automation is affecting all aspects of life, from the factory floor to the back-office work, and now pervading human interaction environments such as client/business engagements, or driverless cars and drone delivery systems. As usual, automation is driven on techno-economic terms through gains in productivity and/or quality measures.

The question about “technology for the good of society” (from which the event title stems) is age-old but in the context of “automation” it is expanded. Who actually does take responsibility for the actions in automation? Could a “machine” have an “ethical” responsibility? We take a classical point of view, that despite the lack of total predictability, we (humans) as the creators of the technology take the ethical responsibility of how the technology is governed and applied so as to serve society. The moral obligations of respecting our humanity (and its future), and our natural environment underpins this approach. We also argue that the legal context of our human rights provides a perfectly adequate starting framework that enjoys a necessary, and appropriate international standing.

Speaker

Iven Mareels
Prof and Director of Centre for Applied Research, IBM

Prof Iven Mareels is a Fellow of Engineers Australia, the Academy of Technology and Engineering, the International Federation of Automatic Control, the IEEE and the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts. Since 2018 he has been with IBM, presently responsible for the Centre for Applied Research that focuses on Data & AI. Before joining IBM he was an academic engaged in research on large scale systems. He served as Dean of Engineering at the University of Melbourne from 2007-2018. Iven has co-authored over 500 refereed publications, and holds over 30 patents that are commercially used.