Tim Hwang is a partner at Robot Robot & Hwang, a law firm and technology consultancy focusing on experiments at the intersection of legal and computer code. He leads an initiative seeking to develop general principles and common frameworks to guide policymaking as intelligent systems emerge and become increasingly ubiquitous in a variety of arenas including capital markets, warfare, medicine, transportation, and social life at large.
Tim Hwang
All Work
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Longform
Vice“Just as the software and hardware of the internet has been militarized by the imperatives of a mostly secret 'cyberwar,' so too are online social spaces being weaponized in new and mostly hidden ways.” D&S researcher Tim Hw... Read on ViceSeptember 2015 -
op-ed
The AtlanticD&S fellow Tim Hwang distinguishes between offline boycotts and online refusals to link in the context of the advertising-driven Internet. What moral principles and norms are implicated when individuals choose not to link o... Read on The AtlanticAugust 2015 -
op-ed
Slate"Increasingly, what underlies the debate over the so-called sharing economy is a nascent, bigger battle about how society wants machines coordinating and governing human activity. These apps don't match and route people by hand... Read on SlateJuly 2015 -
op-ed
Quartz"In a self-driving car, the control of the vehicle is shared between the driver and the car’s software. How the software behaves is in turn controlled — designed — by the software engineers. It’s no longer true to say that the ... Read on QuartzJuly 2015 -
Resource
Data & SocietyD&S fellow Tim Hwang participated in a session on "Memory Holes and Security Blankets," a discussion focusing on the legal and policy consequences of systems that process audio, at Listening Machines Summit. Tim's talk d... Read moreJune 2015 -
Longform
ViceData & Society's Intelligence and Autonomy initiative commissioned authors to envision future scenarios for intelligent systems in four domains: medicine, labor, urban design, and warfare. The future scenario around medi... Read on ViceMay 2015 -
op-ed
CivicistIn this piece for Civic Hall's Civicist, Samuel Woolley and D&S fellow Tim Hwang argue that "[t]he failure of the ‘good bot’ is a failure of design, not a failure of automation" and urge us not to dismiss the potential bene... Read on CivicistMay 2015 -
video
Tech Policy Lab University of Washington"As policy concerns around intelligent and autonomous systems come to focus increasingly on transparency and usability, the time is ripe for an inquiry into the theater of autonomous systems. When do (and when should) law and p... Read on Tech Policy Lab University of WashingtonApril 2015 -
Longform
MediumD&S fellows Karen Levy and Tim Hwang ask after the ethics of design theater. Excerpt: "A machine’s front stage performance gets enacted through design. Just as a human provides front stage cues through her appearance and... Read on MediumApril 2015 -
report
Data & SocietyWhat will happen to current regimes of liability when driverless cars become commercially available? What happens when there is no human actor—only a computational agent—responsible for an accident? "Praise the Machine! Punish the Human!" addresses these questions by examining the historical emergence and response to autopilot and cruise control. Read moreFebruary 2015