Technology in the Courtroom

Live broadcasts of court proceedings have become more common around the world, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. In China, they are also part of an effort to encourage judicial transparency.But sentiment about such broadcasts is divided. Some fear that judges...

The Challenges with Computer Vision

The power of computers to ‘see’ – to recognise visual patterns – is being tapped for all sorts of purposes, from enabling autonomous vehicles, to providing fast and comprehensive analysis of medical image results, to recognising faces. But there...

Tipping the Scales for Public Health

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK government announced that it was “following the science” in implementing severe interventions. The approach sounded reasonable, but soon revealed serious limitations, particularly in regard to people’s freedoms and...

Life outside the Law in China

The Chinese central government has introduced many policies over the years to spur economic growth and curtail excesses such as corruption. But there have been unintended consequences. For instance, policies to develop coastal cities have attracted millions of...

Reining in Tech Platforms

In 2022, US courts ordered American talk show host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay more than US$1 billion in damages to the parents of several of the 20 children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School by a gunman in 2012. Jones had been claiming online...