The Right to a Human Decision: Safeguard or Formality?
When machines decide faster than humans can watch, does the right to a human decision still make sense, or has it become a cumbersome formality rather than an actual safeguard?
Article 22 GDPR and the EU AI Act guarantee forms of human involvement in high-stakes automated decisions. Yet agentic AI increasingly operates at speeds and levels of autonomy that make meaningful human oversight difficult, if not impossible.
This discussion asks whether the right to a human decision still protects anyone, or whether the law should abandon it altogether and rethink its safeguards for human agency. If putting a human in the loop is no longer enough, what should take its place — stronger system-level safeguards, new forms of accountability, or something else entirely?
⚠️ Doors close at 18:30 sharp! Arrive before then.
Speakers
Prof. Dr. Philipp Hacker, LL.M. (Yale)
Holds the Chair for Law and Ethics of the Digital Society at the European New School of Digital Studies (Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder). Previously an AXA Postdoctoral Fellow at Humboldt University Berlin and a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. His research sits at the intersection of law and technology — tracking technologies, AI, and IoT — with a focus on privacy, anti-discrimination law, and algorithmic fairness, often in direct collaboration with computer scientists and mathematicians working on explainable AI.
Prof Dr Dr (hc) Jeremias Adams-Prassl
Professor of Law and Associate Dean (Research) at the Faculty of Law, Oxford University, a Fellow of Magdalen College, and a Visiting Fellow at ENS. He read law at Oxford, Paris, and Harvard Law School and holds an honorary doctorate in law from Lund University. Jeremias' research focuses on technology, innovation policy and the future of work in the European Union and beyond. He advises governments, international organisations, and private companies across the world, and has received numerous prizes for his work, including the Philip Leverhulme Prize.
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