Technology Law and Policy Lecture Series

Clawed by the Machine: Agentic AI and Its Unchecked Informational Risks

Date: October 22, 2026 (Thursday)

Time: 12pm - 1pm

Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong

Speaker: Adam Au (Acting Co-Chief Executive Officer, Toys"R"Us Asia)

Data protection law in Hong Kong, the EU, and Mainland China all rest on the same premise: information is protected insofar as it links back to an identifiable living individual. Persistent AI agents now test that premise by accumulating rich behavioural profiles that may no longer be tied to any natural person. This presentation examines how agentic profiles strain the PDPO's definitional gateways, rejects the fix of granting AI agents legal personhood, and proposes that protection should turn not only on who the data is about, but on what it can do.

Adam Au, Acting Co-CEO of Toys"R"Us Asia, is a seasoned executive and a passionate advocate for data privacy and technology governance. An Honorary Professor of the UniWise Institute for Technology Policy and Fellow of Information Privacy (FIP), he also serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor at The University of Hong Kong, where he teaches across the Faculty of Law, the Department of Philosophy, and the School of Governance and Policy. Adam holds an MBA from MIT Sloan, law degrees from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Economics and East Asian Studies from Brown University.

Discussants: 

Brain Tang, Founding Executive Director, LITE Lab@HKU, The University of Hong Kong

Angus Young, Senior Lecturer, The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law

Moderator: Haochen Sun, Professor of Law, The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law

To register, please go to https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&UEID=109823.

For inquiries, please contact Ms. Grace Chan at mcgrace@hku.hk / 3917 4727.