This talk is part of the Advanced Seminar on Law and Technology series.
Date: October 5, 2026 (Monday)
Time: 10am – 11am
Venue: CPD-1.24, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, The University of Hong Kong
Speaker: Kamil Mamak (Associate Professor, Jagiellonian University)
Could future robots suffer, and should we ever intentionally create machines capable of suffering? The possibility of artificial suffering is usually presented as something that should be avoided. If machines could genuinely experience pain or distress, humans might acquire new moral and legal duties toward them. In this talk, I will consider a different possibility: that some capacity for suffering could play an important role in the development of advanced artificial intelligence. I will discuss three reasons for taking this possibility seriously. First, suffering may contribute to the development of moral understanding and character in machines. Second, it could make punishment meaningful for robots that cause serious harm, helping to address the problem of responsibility and the so-called retribution gap. Third, the capacity to suffer could potentially function as a mechanism for influencing and controlling highly advanced AI systems. These arguments raise a broader question about whether creating artificial suffering could sometimes be morally justified despite the ethical risks involved.
Kamil Mamak is an Associate Professor, philosopher and legal scholar at the Jagiellonian University. He is an ERC laureate (Starting Grant): “Philosophical Foundations of Criminal Law in the Age of Robots“. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the RADAR: Robophilosophy, AI Ethics and Datafication research group at the University of Helsinki in 2021–2024. He is also a Member of the Board of the Cracow Institute of Criminal Law. He holds PhDs in law (2018) from Jagiellonian University and in philosophy (2020) from the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków. He has authored five book monographs, including “Robotics, AI and Criminal Law: Crimes against Robots” (Routledge, 2023) and “Ethics in Human-like Robots” (Routledge, 2024). He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and contributed chapters. He is a recipient of the Minister’s Scholarship for Outstanding Young Scientists and the Scientific Award of Polityka weekly 2023.
Moderator: Marianne von Blomberg, Global Academic Fellow, The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law
To register, please go to https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&UEID=109520.
For inquiries, please contact Ms. Grace Chan at / 3917 4727.