Shearman & Sterling hosted a conference on “Universal Artificial Intelligence: Levelling the Playing Field” in Paris on November 15, 2019 in collaboration with UNCITRAL and BCG Gamma.
The day opened with mathematician, Fields Medal winner and politician Cédric Villani, who shared reflections on the scientific, societal and political implications of AI, followed by presentations by high level representatives from the OECD and UNESCO, Karine Perset (Administrator on Digital Economy and Artificial Intelligence Policy, Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation, OECD) and Moez Chakchouk (Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, UNESCO), on the work and initiatives of their respective organizations in the field of international cooperation on AI. Sylvain Duranton (BCG GAMMA Global Leader) and Magnus Magnusson (Director, Partnerships and Outreach, Social and Human Sciences Sector, UNESCO) then addressed AI and business, and AI and ethics, focusing on the human factor underlying AI.
The afternoon session showcased applications of AI in the fields of medicine (diagnosis of rare diseases by Anni Coden, Partner and Associate Director, Boston Consulting Group), education (Fengchun Miao, Chief, Unit for ICT in Education, UNESCO), critical systems (Christophe Meyer, Senior Expert, Director of Artificial Intelligence & Data Science Labs, THALES) and music (François Pachet, Director, Spotify Creator Technology Research Lab).
The day concluded with a panel dedicated to AI in law, which included discussions of the application of AI to legal data (Georges-André Silber, Lecturer, MINES ParisTech; Co-Founder, Luxia), AI transforming law (Mathieu Coulaud, Head of Legal, Microsoft France) and the modeling of the judicial decision making process (Jacques Lévy-Véhel, Research Director, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA), Founder, Case Law Analytics) followed by magistrate and writer Antoine Garapon on the distinction between legal causality and algorithmic correlation.
UNCITRAL closed the event with a presentation by UNCITRAL’s Secretary Anna Joubin-Bret on their future work on disputes in the world of high-tech.
Thank you to our exceptional speakers for sharing their knowledge and expertise and for making the conference such a success.
The panels’ videos and reports will be published on the event’s dedicated website at https://www.universalartificialintelligence.org/.
