Mark Richard Gaffley

I am an admitted attorney with over 13 years of start-up, in-house legal, and research experience gained through leading local and international organisations including Uber, Takealot, Media24, the HSRC, simple.Capital(), and the Global Center on AI Governance (GCG).

In 2019 I established my own legal and research consultancy, .athinktank, which undertakes law-focused artificial intelligence research and advisory projects. I hold degrees in Arts (history and sociology), Law, and a PhD in Jurisprudence, all from the University of Cape Town (UCT). My research focus is on the moral implications of artificial intelligence, particularly its effect on human autonomy and independent decision-making.

I currently hold positions as Director: Legal & Operations at GCG, Honorary Senior Lecturer in the IF Gene RA Group, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, UCT, and Visiting Research Fellow, Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, WITS.

I am a co-author of Human Rights and the Fourth Industrial Revolution in South Africa (HSRC Press, 2021), the first major investigation of the real and potential human rights implications of the 4IR in South Africa.