Brooklyn Book Festival Brings Together Authors, Readers, in Virtual Setting

For the ninth year, the Law School served as host and sponsor of the Brooklyn Book Festival, a popular annual event that draws thousands of authors, booksellers, and readers from around the country to Brooklyn Heights and Downtown Brooklyn. This year, the festival went fully online, presenting free programming featuring an array of national and international literary stars and emerging authors.

This year, the Law School hosted the panel “Technology’s Past and Future: The Need for Justice and Insight,” a discussion of the intersection of law and technology, moderated by Vice Dean Christina Mulligan, and featuring Professor Frank Pasquale; Charlton McIlwain, vice provost and professor of media, culture and communication at New York University; and award-winning author Joanne McNeil. They explored the ways in which the development of algorithms and AI has changed everyone’s daily lives.

In his new book, New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI (Harvard University Press, 2020), Pasquale makes the case that policymakers must not allow corporations or engineers to determine how much AI can be entrusted with tasks once performed by humans. He proposes ways to democratize the decision-making in AI development and offers an inspiring vision of technological progress, in which human capacities and expertise are the irreplaceable center of an inclusive economy.

The outdoor Festival Marketplace was replaced this year with a virtual marketplace where readers could browse and purchase books displayed by partner vendors.

Watch the panel discussion

Browse books by Law School faculty authors

Watch the coverage on NY1