Research
Karen Yeung asks fundamental questions about how emerging technologies – particularly networked digital technologies – create, enhance and redistribute power in society.
Expertise and Interests
Her research seeks to identify and understand how technological power can be abused, creating injustice and undermining human rights, human flourishing and the structural foundations of democratic freedom. Her inquiries are rooted upon three core areas in which her expertise rests:
- the study of regulatory governance
- the regulation and governance of emerging technologies, particularly networked digital technologies including artificial intelligence
- the use of new technologies as instruments of regulation
Animating Question
One of the key question that guides Karen Yeung’s research is: how do new and emerging technologies enable novel forms of power, practices and social relations? Her approach is underpinned by a belief that a basic grasp of the technical mechanisms through which new technologies work is necessary to understand their social, legal and political significance.
Aims and Approach
To help cultivate technological innovation that enhances human capabilities and flourishing democratic communities, Karen Yeung advocates technology governance by a human-rights centred approach to technological design, deliberation and oversight.
Such an approach requires the integration of knowledge and insight from across the natural and mathematical sciences, humanities and social sciences including a clear eyed appraisal of their real contribution to meeting human need and enhancing human flourishing and the extent to which the benefits and burdens are fairly distributed.
Karen Yeung is committed to developing a new approach to the governance of networked digital technologies (including artificial intelligence) in ways that will provide effective safeguards against malicious applications and unintended effects that serve to erode the foundations of democracy, the rule of law and human freedom.
Publications
Karen Yeung publishes regularly in academic journals, as well as policy papers aimed at policymakers worldwide. She is also the author of several pioneering books concerning the regulation of new and emerging technologies including Algorithmic Regulation and The Oxford Handbook on Law, Regulation and Technology and Regulating Technologies. Her published responses to various policy consultations and contributions to policy reports can can be found on the Policy page.
