Lex Machinart

Lex Machin(art) was a solo art exhibition at the Webb Gallery translating my PhD research on The Role of Trustworthiness in Automated Decision-making Systems and the Law. The four walls of the gallery were themed: Anxiety, Wonder, Knowledge and Hope.

This first wall spoke to my cantankerous Anxiety that grew from 2018 when we started to realise the threat of Big Data and AI systems on individuals and society. These pieces capture the starting point of why I started the Phd - the need for guiding principles (first piece on the left) to orient the law to protect our most vulnerable even when faced with this ever-looming horizon of new technologies nesting at the edge of our senses, evolving, ready to pounce. Some of the other pieces referenced the Cambridge Analytica scandal and my evolving understanding of privacy. I used to think of privacy as that Rene Magritte painting 'The Son of Man' with the anonymous man in the bowler hat hidden behind this green apple. Instead, I've come to perceive the state of affairs as something that's been eaten to the core, leaving us all exposed.

The second wall spoke to this wonder and technological optimism that feels so familiar, like a part of the family. As a young architecture student, I was convinced that the only way forward through our urban challenges was through technology - how it would be a panacea to solving these intractable problems that have repeatedly arisen in our cities, our democratic societies. Got a problem? Add technology. Got loneliness? Add technology. Got anxiety? Add... well, I'm not sure that this approach is quite working for us any longer. But yet, there is much Wonder. Imagine cyborg pets imbued with baby-sitting functions (yes, please!), legal personhood, the latest educational technology, that plug into Large Language Models to generate (appropriate) fantastical bedtime stories to carry our children off to sleep.

The third wall spoke to a clash of Knowledge regimes. On one end, the data collectors trying to 'know' us at the granular level and to capture us in ever-increasing complex data sets in perpetuity - allowing our data to be interrogated at will time and time again. On the other end, there is this pressing need to inoculate our young, to give them 'knowledge' to guard against the technological optimism that lulls us into surrendering more and more of our privacy. I got to test out the illustrations for my second children's picture book translating my research in this area. It was so great to see the kids at play.

The last wall drew on the unformed parts of the law. It looked for how we assemble our legal frameworks; how our laws are built from the preceding anxieties, wonder and knowledge regimes that swirl together in a value consensus machine. The output of this machine is a value congruence - a standard by which we attempt to measure integrity - giving us a way to navigate how we integrate sensors in our cities, prepare our young, and design and deploy technologies that communicate benevolence to give us a Hope we can hold on to.