OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
New technologies can bring tremendous benefits. But they also have costs, or
risks, some known, some unknown. How should authorities regulate new technologies in
the light of the possible costs and benefits? A standard approach to decision making under
risk is to use formal risk cost-benefit analysis. Yet there are clear limits to this approach
where risks and probabilities are unknown. Furthermore, simple cost-benefit analysis
ignores questions of moral hazard – where benefits and costs fall – and the political
dimensions of the introduction of new technologies. In this paper, I discuss how to frame a
reasonable precautionary attitude to the risks of new technology, setting out a series of
questions that need to be taken into account before a technology should be approved.
