Much of the current conversation about generative AI centres on what these models output and what users see and engage with. But the less visible side of machine learning echoes an older and unresolved debate that deserves renewed attention. From credit scoring to software that scans our emotions, to old standbys like facial recognition, these systems matter just as much.
In this episode, the SCL host Mauricio Figueroa sits down with Alexis Ingber and Becca Owens, whose research examines these issues from different angles and from opposite sides of the Atlantic. Listeners may find common ground with our previous episode on the GDPR. These are open questions that are hard to resolve, but conversations like this one help keep them open and keep us reflecting on them.

Mauricio Figueroa is Assistant Professor in Commercial Law at Durham University and the host of the SCL Podcast.

Alexis Shore Ingber is an Assistant Professor of Communications within the S.I. Newhouse School for Public Communications at Syracuse University. Ingber’s interdisciplinary research bridges privacy law and media psychology to empirically assess regulatory and design solutions for protecting against institutional and interpersonal privacy harms across emerging technologies. Previously, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan School of Information and received her PhD in Emerging Media Studies from Boston University.

Rebecca Owens is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in AI Law, at Durham University. Her interdisciplinary, mixed-methods research spans law, computer science, and business. Before joining Durham Law School, Dr Owens was a Research Associate at Newcastle University on the EPSRC-funded AGENCY project, which examined complex online harms. Her research has been published in leading peer-reviewed law journals and several CORE A*/A-ranked computer science conference. Recently, she co-authored a paper on agentic AI liability, which received the best paper prize at the Machine Lawyering Conference in Hong Kong. Dr Owens holds a PhD in Law from the University of Liverpool.