Special Topic: Artificial Intelligence & Law

Description

In more or less perceptible forms, AI is becoming increasingly pervasive in modern societies. Some instantiations of AI receive massive media coverage – as is the case with self-driving vehicles or autonomous weapon systems – others creep into our lives much less conspicuously – like AI-enabled decision-making systems using predictive analytics in financial services, the justice system, and in the healthcare sector. While these powerful, transformative technologies have the potential to solve many problems humanity is currently grappling with, their use also presents fundamental ethical, legal, and social problems, forcing us to rethink our most basic beliefs and values. Whether AI turns out to be a blessing or a curse to humanity probably largely depends on how we decide to shape these technologies in their infancy. It is therefore paramount to understand their very essence, to reflect on many social, moral, economic, and legal questions in order to determine the ways in which we wish them to influence our lives, and to implement those ideas in the form of robust, safe, and responsible AI regulation and policies.

With that in mind, the proposed course will be divided in three parts: the first, technical part will introduce the concept of AI and give a short overview of the existing spectrum of rapidly growing AI technologies. In a second thematic unit, it will then familiarize students with prominent ethical, economic, and policy debates associated with AI. The third section of the course will take up specific legal topics (with a primary focus on NZ law) – such as privacy law, intellectual property law, medical law, or criminal law, to name just a few of many possible choices – and invite students to think about how these fields could best be adapted to accommodate AI technologies. Case studies will be used where appropriate.

Blending technical, moral, economic, and legal theory, this course will be of interest to students with a technical inclination, who wish to contribute to the genuinely innovative worldwide efforts to design appropriate policy frameworks around AI – be it in the realm of academia, industry, or public policy – want to deal with these newly emerging technologies within the remit of their own legal field – e.g., litigating intellectual property or medical malpractice cases with AI involvement – or simply just prefer to know their way around AI to better cope in their everyday lives.