AI, Corporate Responsibility & Democratic Legitimacy

This presentation was recorded at GOTO Copenhagen 2025. https://gotocph.com Joanna Bryson - Professor of Ethics and Technology, Responsible Data Science for Human Development @j2bryson ORIGINAL TALK TITLE AI, Corporate Responsibility & Democratic Legitimacy – Is DevOps the Answer? RESOURCES https://mastodon.social/@j2bryson https://twitter.com/j2bryson https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryson https://joanna-bryson.blogspot.com Links https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/11/17/how-hamas-breached-israel-iron-wall https://youtu.be/EqMe1J4a6IQ https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza https://online.ucpress.edu/gp/article/2/1/24803/117647/Is-There-an-AI-Cold-War https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/kursk-russia-ukraine-war-putin-ceasefire-b2713769.html https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08231 ABSTRACT Those engaged in regulatory disruption often allege that AI is opaque. Yet far more complex human institutions function adequately, despite being never fully comprehended in every detail by any one individual. In this talk I discuss legitimacy and responsibility as a design requirement for both governments and AI systems, and how good systems engineering practice can deploy AI for increased transparency. […] TIMECODES 00:00 Intro 06:46 When AI fails: Real-world examples 11:28 Polarization & inequality like it’s 1899 17:18 How do we change? Who’s responsible? 20:16 EU digital regulation 27:20 Does the EU have a right to regulate AI? 36:39 DevOps 41:30 Robots are not our peers 42:22 Summary 43:20 Outro Download slides and read the full abstract here: https://gotocph.com/2025/sessions/3739