Date: 22 May 2025.
Location: Ludovika University of Public Service, Ludovika Main Building (1083 Budapest, Ludovika Square 2.)
Program and registration (in Hungarian): Európai értékek a legújabb technológiák között – konferencia program
On 22 May 2025, the Constitutional Court of Hungary, the National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information and the Institute of the Information Society at Ludovika University of Public Service will once again organise their annual conference to discuss the impact of technological developments on individuals, society, the state and the law.
In 2020 and 2021, two "disruptive technologies", artificial intelligence and internet platforms, were the focus of our conferences, and in 2022, without specifying a particular technology, we chose a key area of impact, democracy, as the focal point. Also in 2023 and 2024, we did not narrow the focus of the event to a specific technology, but instead looked at the consequences of the use of new technologies on the personalities and rights of individuals and on the lives of human communities.
This year's conference once again opens its horizons wide to explore how European thinking and regulation is responding to the challenges of technological change. The spread of digital information tools and artificial intelligence is having an increasing impact on our humanity, our personal circumstances and the way our societies work. Although the resulting challenges are global, there are clear differences in international policy and legislation on how to respond. Among the international examples, a distinctly European approach can be clearly outlined, which seeks to focus both in its thinking and in its regulatory solutions on the values shared across the old continent. Whether it is anthropological views on the human being in the age of artificial intelligence, the constitutional and legal rights of the individual, or the functioning of democracy and social life, European thinking and EU and national legislation are based on values and perspectives that are specific to Europe. In the current evolving geopolitical context, it is particularly worthwhile to examine the specificity of this European path and its future.
As in previous years, the conference will address both the positive and negative consequences of new technologies. On the one hand, any solution that can be classified as a new technology - from the internet to Big Data-based applications, artificial intelligence and various digital tools - has a place among the issues to be examined. On the other hand, the conference will take a broad European approach, looking at the implications for the individual's personality, rights, assertion of interests and social functioning, as well as the issues of human control of technologies and the inevitability of the human factor.
This year's conference is also a celebration of 30 years of Hungarian data protection institutions, as the first Hungarian Data Protection Commissioner started his work in 1995.