Congratulations to James Sweeney on his Leverhulme Trust success.  James Sweeney is a graduate of LLB Law at Leeds Beckett University before most recently completing the LLM in Law and Technology at Queens University Belfast.

The LINAS Talking Technologies project accepts that the age of the keyboard is beginning to end, our reliance on newly found Intelligent Voice Assistants from Apple’s Siri to Amazon’s Alexa will prevail. However, accompanying this technological revolution will be a number of regulatory and ethical issues as we move into an era in which we are always being listened to – whether we realise it or not! This project will identify the risks to us as users and address them, with the aim of making the move from keyboard to voice a positive and successful transformation.

James’ primary supervisor is Professor John Morison (School of Law) with Dr Sandra Scott-Hayward (EEECS) acting as secondary supervisor.

James – “I am thrilled to be embarking on my PhD journey at Queens within the prestigious Mitchell Institute and LINAS Programme, along with the School of Law. Whilst it was always my ambition to complete my law degree and become a Barrister, I have been drawn to a journey in academia, primarily due to the inter-disciplinary nature of the Law and Technology LLM and now the LINAS programme - both here at Queens. The cross section of this inter-disciplinarity is an intersection that continues to widen, I am thrilled to be in the centre of this continuous development as it becomes more vital for everyone in our daily lives.”

Professor John Morison – “Intelligent Voice Assistants (IVAs), powered by artificial intelligence will shortly be interacting for us across everyday life from shopping to childcare, entertainment to education, to organising our social life and running our households. The regulatory challenges that this raises are very far-reaching.  For instance, are IVAs to be seen as merely agents of their owners or as having a distinct legal personality?  What happens to privacy? Should they be considered to have liability for their actions? Or be taxable for the work they perform? Or have rights themselves?  The supervisory team on this project are really looking forward to exploring  these issues, and many more, with James over the next four years.”

We welcome PhD applications from prospective students. Further details on how to apply can be found at https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofLaw/study/postgraduate-research/