Sir Geoffrey Vos’s Blackstone lecture (given Wednesday 27 November 2024) looked at the subject of whether the current international legal order, as it affects human rights, is fit for purpose in the light of the changes and challenges in the age of the machine.

The Editors wish to extend their thanks to the host, Pembroke College, Oxford, and Atkin Chambers, sponsors, for giving permission to reproduce this lecture.

Perhaps the most popular contemporary subjects for judicial articles and lectures are Artificial Intelligence (AI) and climate change. I have certainly not been backward in coming forward to make my contribution on the former, if not the latter, subject. Tonight, I want to take a step back from the usual arguments about whether AI can or should be used for various hitherto human tasks, whether AI is likely to make lawyers and/or judges redundant and whether either or both of public and private law need to be adjusted to reduce environmental damage caused by the continuing global use of fossil fuels.

I want to ask, even if I cannot answer, a more fundamental question that should, I think, be concerning the modern-day legal community. That question, put at its broadest, is whether the current international legal order, as it affects the rights of humans, is fit for purpose in the light of the changes and challenges of what I think we can now call the machine age.

I was struck, when speaking last week at an international conference on AI at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law, by the different approaches that judges and lawyers from different parts of the world are taking to 
AI and to the changes to our legal landscape that it is causing. In essence, as it seems to me, most are more comfortable speaking about what is 
going on at the operational level, rather than venturing to consider higher level principles. I will explain what I mean.