Annual Applied Complexity Network and Board of Trustees Symposium: 2016
From Santa Fe Institute Events Wiki
| ACtioN Navigation |
Law OS: The Evolution and Complexity of Legal and Regulatory
November 03, 2016 - November 05, 2016
Held at Inn at Loretto in Santa Fe, New Mexico
“If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.” ― Winston S. Churchill
This meeting will explore the idea that laws and regulations serve as the operating systems of societies – a 'Law OS.' Like operating systems, laws evolve to manage a vast range of complex functions. Much as Linux, Windows and Mac OS coordinate the execution of numerous applications, laws and regulations aspire to ensure the fair and reliable running of society. Like operating systems, laws respond to the growth of conflicts of interest, crime, and cheating by growing in complexity — encoding an ever-increasing number of rules and regulations to counter the abuse of power. On occasion the complexity of these rules becomes an abusive power in its own right.
This meeting shall explore various questions on the theme of Law OS, such as: do legal systems occasionally need complete redesigns, as operating systems do? Does the complexity of current legal and regulatory system exceed our human capacity for attention, and can AI help address this constraint? Where are the emerging rules and regulations in biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and autonomous vehicles taking us as a society?