Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) or superintelligence promises great disruption in the law, economy, and society. The world is close to reaching an inflection point; the so-called existential threat of superintelligence with the potential of replacing human control and decision-making with its creation. The focus should be on mitigating the negative effects of disruption and using smart design to prevent AI from ever becoming an existential threat to humankind.

The past few years have seen a rapid global scramble of governments developing strategic plans for Artificial Intelligence (AI). We focus in this chapter on four of the largest global economies and what their AI plans mean for higher education. Since 2016, China, the EU, the US, and the UK have all published strategic plans for AI (Fa, 2017; Hall and Pesenti, 2017; USA Government, 2019; European Commission, 2020). These plans’ speed appears to indicate a matter of urgency and a sense of high governmental priority. This chapter discusses how these plans differ, what we might look out for and the likely developments ahead for higher education. Higher education is of central importance to meet the coming AI economy’s demands, and embracing AI is broadly considered a transformative existential requirement for many universities’ survival (Aoun, 2017). How governments and their higher learning institutions are planning this transformation is of the utmost importance to us all.

Herbert Simon noted that it is the duty of people who study a new technology to offer their interpretations regarding its likely effects on society.1

Industry is a major contributor to climate change. Many industrial sites, supply chains and customers are vulnerable to climate change and policy and consumer responses to climate change. Profits from industrial production depend on consumer demand, and how products are provided. Powerful forces such as digitalisation, dematerialisation, decentralisation, electrification, efficiency improvement and circular economies influence production and emissions Industrial firms face pressure from regulators, investors and customers. However, there is enormous potential to capture multiple benefits through aggressive, innovative decarbonisation strategies that target growth markets and involve cooperation along supply chains. Economic productivity and business competitiveness improvement can cut business costs and reduce extreme weather risk exposure, whilst positioning manufacturing companies for fast-growing markets in low-carbon resilient products and services. The chapter overviews policies national and subnational government policymakers can consider to support transition to a zero-carbon resilient industrial sector.

This chapter introduces three cross-cutting themes that illustrate the relationship between artificial intelligence and international economic law (IEL): disruption, regulation, and reconfiguration. We explore the theme of disruption along the trifecta of AI-related technological, economic, and legal change. In this context, the impact of AI triggers political and economic pressures, as evidenced by intensive lobbying and engagement in different governance venues for and against various regulatory choices, including what will be regulated, how to regulate it, and whom should be regulated. Along these lines, we assess the extent to which IEL has already been reconfigured and examine the need for further reconfiguration. We conclude this introduction chapter by bringing the contributions we assembled in this volume into conversation with one another and identify topics that warrant further research. Taken as a whole, this book portrays the interaction between AI and IEL. We have collectively explored and evaluated the impact of AI disruption, the need for AI regulation, and directions for IEL reconfiguration.

This chapter introduces three cross-cutting themes that illustrate the relationship between artificial intelligence and international economic law (IEL): disruption, regulation, and reconfiguration. We explore the theme of disruption along the trifecta of AI-related technological, economic, and legal change. In this context, the impact of AI triggers political and economic pressures, as evidenced by intensive lobbying and engagement in different governance venues for and against various regulatory choices, including what will be regulated, how to regulate it, and whom should be regulated. Along these lines, we assess the extent to which IEL has already been reconfigured and examine the need for further reconfiguration. We conclude this introduction chapter by bringing the contributions we assembled in this volume into conversation with one another and identify topics that warrant further research. Taken as a whole, this book portrays the interaction between AI and IEL. We have collectively explored and evaluated the impact of AI disruption, the need for AI regulation, and directions for IEL reconfiguration.

Chapter 10 continues the theme of royal inaugurations as a process, covering the events immediately following on from a ruler’s enthronement to his first few years on the throne. Having been awarded a royal title did not inure a king against challenges and rivals. It normally took about 3–4 years before a ruler’s grip on power was secure. Successful rulers were those who overcame challenges during these years, while those who failed might either be disposed or replaced, or struggle to assert their authority fully across the realm. Key to success was a new king’s ability to demonstrate that he abided by the normative framework of royal power. He ruled for the common good, not for private gain. Yet what did this mean in practice? How could he win over those opposed to his kingship, erstwhile competitors and disappointed nobles? What was the role of the his subjects during these first few years? How could they seek to shape the governance of the realm? What was the role of force, and how did it relate to the doing of justice? How could generosity be balanced with equity? How did rulers deal with acts of disruption and dispute?

This chapter examines questions of governance in colonial contexts, noting important similarities between colonial governance and governance approaches in corporations.

In 2002, the UN Panel of Experts on Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo issued its final report.2 In it, the Panel included a list it had compiled of companies involved in the war economy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Panel, which had been mandated by the Security Council to examine the DRC war economy and make recommendations about sanctions and other measures, stated that ‘[b]y contributing to the revenues of the elite networks, directly or indirectly, those companies and individuals contribute to the ongoing conflict and to human rights abuses’.3 The Panel appended to its report several lists: one identified ‘companies on which the panel recommends placing financial restrictions’ and a second consisted of names of ‘persons for whom the Panel recommends travel and financial restrictions’. A third list identified businesses alleged to be ‘in violation of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises’.4

The present and past are insufficient guides for designing learning: we must also make wise use of futures thinking. Today, we have tools available that give clear indications of future trends. These trends are certainly not immutable; they will change but they also can be shaped. Educators need to consider how to prepare learners to understand and shape the direction and impacts of these trends. What it means to thrive has to be filtered through the awareness of emerging challenges for our planet, our societies and ourselves. Current scholarship and analysis suggest that humanity stands at the cusp of three great pivot points in its history. First, the planetary emergency, encompassing the climate crisis, consequences of the anthropocene, and the Sixth Great Extinction. Second, the apotheosis of technology, through artificial intelligence. And third, the possibilities for human evolution as multiple biomedical technologies converge. Never in human history have such profound, literally unprecedented changes been in prospect. But nothing is immutable. The future is not a straight line; it can and will be shaped by how and what young people learn in schools.

The chapter will describe a pragmatist view of habit formation and of learning or inquiry. Indeed, one essential function of the brain is the formation of habits to suit contexts. Another major function of cephalic (mind, brain, body, world) sensibility is maintaining them. Habit formation in our species is tied to learning and inquiry; habit stability is mediated across the brain and continuous with the ecological/social milieu we are living in. There is a continuous thread between what is in the brain/body and what is not, in the neural organization of habits. The thread is quite permeable. Habits are sustained, or not, by the niche they are sculpted in, and evolve in or not.

This chapter seeks to justify and explain the Wife of Bath’s prominence among the Canterbury pilgrims as the representative of Chaucer’s powers of representation and as the anchor of the debate on marriage witnessed across a number of tales. As a source of dramatic intensity and thematic richness, the Wife offers an argumentative and autobiographical anti-clerical prologue and a redemptive romance that complicate received ideas of women’s value in marriage. She demonstrates the Wife’s stereotypically “feminine” foibles and her radically feminist thought, which turn our neat conceptions of masculine and feminine, active and passive, spiritual and worldly, on their head. The chapter argues for the Wife’s disruptive power in the Canterbury Tales.

Mumbai’s industrial character having faded, the city has turned more nativist. Religious riots in the 1990s caused rifts to deepen and Muslims found themselves confined to ghettos. Waes of aggression have also been directed at outsiders, particularly working class labourers from the north referred to as ‘bhaiyya’ or brother. This chapter examines internal migration and the author’s struggle to try and belong to the city as a woman and a female ‘brother’.

This chapter acts as an introduction to the book by discussing the intersection of law and technology. The topics examined include formalism versus contextualism, form versus context, enforceability, and regulation.

Chapter 2 investigates the legal dimensions of smart contracts. It analyzes the current legal framework, describes some relevant practical issues, identifies the main legal questions raised by the subject, and offers some conclusive remarks. In particular, Chapter 2 aims at exploring whether this potentially breakthrough technology (i.e., the blockchain) implies a legal revolution: Do smart contracts require new legal avenues to be developed, or is it instead appropriate to adapt the existing legal categories to the new reality? In either case, how are and should they be regulated?

This chapter seeks to discredit the popular belief that blockchains will revolutionize or disrupt commerce. More specifically, it aims to clarify that blockchains as such cannot serve as a technology or ideology for the decentralization of online marketplaces. To this end, the chapter examines the interrelated concepts of decentralization, disintermediation, trustlessness, and immutability. It is necessary to understand what those terms actually mean and how they affect actual, commercial practices. The chapter commences with a broad description of blockchains and introduces the important division between public and private blockchains, to demonstrate that only the latter could potentially serve as a technology that could provide a user-friendly and secure transacting environment. It confronts the practical implications of decentralization, focusing on the fact that the absence of formalized control usually translates into an absence of formalized governance processes.