ZiF Research Group
Economic and Legal Challenges in the Advent of Smart Products
October 2021 – July 2022
Convenors: Herbert Dawid (Bielefeld, GER), Sabine Gless (Basel, SUI), Gerd Muehlheusser (Hamburg, GER)
Opening Conference
Economic and Legal Challenges in the Advent of Smart Products
4 – 6 October 2021
Convenors: Herbert Dawid (Bielefeld, GER), Sabine Gless (Basel, SUI), Gerd Muehlheusser (Hamburg, GER)
Smart products, such as smart household appliances, smart health devices or highly automated vehicles, are increasingly finding their way into everyday life. These products raise a number of economic and legal challenges, e.g. regarding product development, consumer acceptance, data privacy and data security, liability and regulation. The main aim of the ZiF research group is to investigate these topics in more detail, and the opening conference offers a platform for disciplinary and interdisciplinary exchange. Apart from contributed papers, the conference will feature two keynotes by Mireille Hildebrandt (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and Eric Talley (Columbia University, New York) as well as a panel discussion with experts from various fields.
The public conference will be held in a hybrid format. Researchers and interested parties are cordially invited to attend online.
Event Program
Monday, 4 October
| 11:30 | Registration |
| 12:00 | Lunch / Welcome Address by the Convenors of the Research Group |
| 13:00 – 15.00 | Liability in Human-Robot Interaction, Chair: Herbert Dawid |
| Michael Faure (Maastricht, Netherlands), Katri Havu (Helsinki, Finland), Shu Li* (Helsinki, Finland): Liability Rules for AI-related Harms: Law and Economics Lessons for a European Approach | |
| Alice Guerra* (Bologna, Italy) / Francesco Parisi (Minneapolis, USA) / Daniel Pi (Saint Paul, USA): Liability for Robots (via Zoom) | |
| 15:00 – 15:30 | Coffee, Tea & Cake Break |
| 15:30 – 17:30 | AI in the Court Room, Chair: Sabine Gless |
| Hendrik Hüning / Lydia Mechtenberg / Huyen Nguyen / Arna Wömmel* (Hamburg, Germany): Normative Preferences over AI System Design in Criminal Courts: A Vignette Study | |
| Benjamin Chen (Hong Kong) / Alexander Stremitzer* (Zurich, Switzerland) / Kevin Tobia (Washington, USA): Having your Day in Robot Court (via Zoom) | |
| 17:45 – 18:45 | Keynote, Chair: Gerd Muehlheusser |
| Eric Talley (New York, USA): Autonomous Vehicles and Legal Liability: Another Revolution in the Making? | |
| 19:00 | Director's Reception at ZiF, Véronique Zanetti (Executive Director of ZiF) |
Tuesday, 5 October
| 8:30 – 10:30 | Liability and Agency, Chair: Gerd Muehlheusser |
| Aileen Nielsen (Zurich, Switzerland): A Duty to Thwart Attacks? The Case of Adversarial Machine Learning (via Zoom) | |
| Klaus Heine* (Rotterdam, Netherlands) / Alberto Quintavalla* (Rotterdam, Netherlands): Smart Products or Smart Slaves? | |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Coffee & Tea Break |
| 11:00 – 13:00 | Data Privacy, Chair: Sabine Gless |
| Kemi Omotubora (Lagos, Nigeria): Privacy Challenges of Consumer Smart Products: A Case study of Wearable healthcare IoTs | |
| Tim Friehe (Marburg, Germany), Leonie Gerhards (Hamburg, Germany), Franziska Weber* (Rotterdam, Netherlands): Keep Them Out of It! How Concerns for Others' Privacy Influence the Willingness to Sell Personal Data | |
| 13:00 – 14:00 | Lunch |
| 14:00 – 16:00 | Liability for highly Automated Vehicles, Chair: Peter Kort |
| Subhajit Basu (Leeds, United Kingdom): Liability and Regulations of Partially Automated Vehicles: Consent dilemma (via Zoom) | |
| Urs Schweizer (Bonn, Germany): Accident Liability and Autonomous Vehicles | |
| 16:00 – 17:00 | Coffee, Tea & Cake Break |
| 17:00 – 18:00 | Panel: How far should we go with Smart Products? |
| Wolfram Burgard (Freiburg, Germany), Marit Hansen (Kiel, Germany), Justus Haucap (Dusseldorf, Germany), Ingo Kaiser (Paderborn, Germany), Tommaso Valletti (London, United Kingdom) | |
| Moderator: Eva Wolfangel (Stuttgart, Germany) | |
| 19:00 | Dinner |
Wednesday, 6 October
| 9:00 – 11:00 | Consumer Acceptance of Smart Products, Chair: Christian Stummer |
| Nicola Bilstein / Melina Schleef* / Paul Schrader / Christian Stummer (Bielefeld, Germany): To remain Smart or to become Dumb (again): How the Legal Obligation to provide Updates for Smart Products impacts Consumers' Behavioral Intentions (via Zoom) | |
| Sebastian Krügel* / Matthias Uhl (Munich, Germany): IoT Solutions in Occupational Health: A Vignette-based Acceptance Study in Germany | |
| 11:00 – 11:30 | Coffee & Tea Break |
| 11:30 – 12:30 | Keynote, Chair: Sabine Gless |
| Mireille Hildebrandt (Brussels, Belgium): AI Liability and the Ideologies of Traditional Law and Economics | |
| 12:30 | Farewell Lunch / Departure |
| * speaker; all times given are CET |
For further questions and for further information, please contact Nadine Sutmöller via smart-products@uni-bielefeld.de .
To register, please contact Trixi Valentin via trixi.valentin@uni-bielefeld.de .
