News Item
July 2018
Two Law Foundation funded projects profiled in LawTalk - Hui on State Care Abuse Inquiry - Artificial Intelligence and Law in NZ
Every month Lynda Hagen, our Law Foundation Director, writes a column for the NZ Law Society’s monthly LawTalk magazine. The articles provide insight into the projects we fund. They highlight the often ground-breaking nature of the work and the anticipated benefits for New Zealanders. Two recent columns: “Survivor Stories Help Shape State Care Abuse Inquiry” – LawTalk, JuneA Law Foundation-supported hui has helped shape the final terms of reference for the Royal Commission into Historical Abuse in State Care. The two-day hui in February, organised by a group of human rights academics and practitioners, brought together “survivor groups” and experts from New Zealand and overseas. It led to new recommendations on how the Royal Commission should operate, including the use of “survivor panels” grouped by experience and attributes such as disability. It also called for abandoning the proposed 49-year time limit on the Commission’s purview, and for explicit recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi in the terms of reference. “Foundation’s Early Investment in Technology Research Bears Fruit” – LawTalk, JulyA decade ago, the Law Foundation took the far-sighted step of establishing a specialist research centre at Otago University to study law and policy challenges for New Zealand arising from the adoption of new technologies. At that time, technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) were only just beginning to emerge. Now AI is with us – more than 140 New Zealand organisations, including many government agencies, are working with or investing in AI. It’s a complex new field with the possibility of significant public impact, but there is very little regulation or even best-practice guidance on its use. The risks have been illustrated in recent complaints about Immigration New Zealand’s use of an AI-based data profiling system to prioritise overstayers for deportation. |
