Note: This syllabus is still under construction. This Note will be removed when it is complete.
Overview
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the way we make decisions, conduct business, and express ourselves. Our legal institutions are responding, and policymakers around the world are tweaking, overhauling, or remaking just about every area of law. This course will investigate existing and emerging legal frameworks that address AI’s growing role in society. Students will survey laws at the local, state, and federal levels from the United States as well as engage in comparative analyses of approaches in other jurisdictions, such as the European Union.
This survey course will cover the interactions between law and AI across many substantive legal topics, including tort law, criminal procedure, due process, employment discrimination, tort, First Amendment, and privacy law, among others. We will come to understand the similar changes that AI brings to different areas of law, why such similarities exist, and what makes them difficult. We will also be able to understand when a specific legal context should instead shape the way we understand AI. All the while, we will be asking a few core questions: What about AI is really new? Why is it a topic of regulation? What are the emerging approaches to regulating AI and why are they emerging as they are?
A core premise of this course is that students must understand the technological advances that are spurring the rapid development of AI well enough to meaningfully discuss regulating the technology. Although no prior technical knowledge is required, students should expect to devote some class hours delving into the technical aspects of AI to understand the legal developments in a deeper manner.
Course Objectives
At the end of this course you will be able to:
- Understand the technological advances that have led to the rapid advance of AI technology and develop a foundation of technical knowledge to better understand future advances;
- Apply the emerging legal frameworks for regulating AI surveyed in the course and anticipate and understand future developments in this area of law;
- Articulate moral, ethical, and policy-focused positions underpinning AI regulation;
- Place the current developments and approaches in AI regulation into longer historical arcs of regulating technology and other complex systems; and
- Diagnose the way AI and related technologies can exacerbate or alleviate pre-existing disparities such as in the differential treatment of individuals and groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, and disability.
Materials
The casebook for this course will be Kaminski, Ohm & Selbst, Artificial Intelligence Law. Unfortunately, the print publication has been delayed until mid-October, so we will be using a digital-only version of the near-final casebook this semester, which you can access through West’s eProduct portal. The nice perk to that arrangement is that the casebook is free. Instructions for book access will be posted in BruinLearn. Because even the temporary version book is likely to not be ready until the second week of classes, I will put pdfs of the first few chapters in the course OneDrive folder.
Class Meetings, Review Session, Final Exam
Class: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:20–4:45 PM, Room 1357
Review Session: Monday, November 30, 2:45–4PM
Final Exam: Tuesday, December 8, in class. Format details TBD.
Note: We will not have class on September 17th. That class will be rescheduled as soon as possible and I will post the change here. Please mark down the change in your calendars. If there are any more changes, I will give you plenty of notice.
Office Hours
Office hours will be on Mondays 3–4 PM, in Room 3370. Please drop in then—no appointments necessary. If you cannot make that time or want to have a private conversation, please email me to schedule another time.
Classroom Policies
Our classroom is an environment in which all participants (instructor included) are free to try out ideas and to voice opinions, including some that might be offensive to others, so long as they do so in good faith and in a manner that does not demean or degrade others. The following rules and policies aim to foster such an environment. I reserve the right to penalize violations, including—albeit only in extraordinary cases and only with advanced written notice—refusing to allow the violator to sit for the final exam.
Attendance
Regular attendance is required for all classes at UCLA Law. If you must miss a class because of a medical need, or serious familial, religious, or professional obligation, please email me at least 2 hours before class to request an excused absence. Class will not be recorded except for religious holidays or other extenuating circumstances as needed.
Class Participation
I expect you to come prepared to participate in class discussion. Good preparedness requires both reading and thinking about the material before showing up in class. Because this is an upper-level course, we will not necessarily discuss every bit of the reading assignments at length. I do want you to read the material for a full understanding of the topic. I encourage questions about anything you find puzzling.
Please note that you will be assessed on the quality, not the quantity, of your participation (though there is certainly correlation). Quality does not mean giving the “correct” answer; thoughtful discussions are more important than facile answers. We will be exploring many new topics for which the answers may change year to year or even week to week, so the answer today might not be the answer tomorrow; it is much more important to learn how to reason through the issues. The key is to be prepared and engaged. Any poor assessment regarding your participation will be the result of protracted absence from class, unexcused lack of participation, disrespectful comments, or evidence of lack of preparation and engagement, such the use of AI to assist with participation in class discussion.
I also ask that you also be cognizant of your speaking time. Some students will be especially keen to volunteer, which I appreciate — but sometimes I will stop calling on frequent speakers to get a diversity of voices. I will also cold call students as needed, because I do not want a small number of students to do the large majority of the talking. If you find that you are speaking often, please consider making space for others in the room who speak less frequently to have their turn. If you find that you are more hesitant to speak, trust that you will have valuable contributions that we would all benefit from hearing, and please consider engaging directly in the discussion.
Recording, Posting, etc.
Per University policy, UCLA Student Conduct Code 102.28 says that expectations of privacy apply, and it specifically prohibits recording without the consent of all recorded parties and prohibits taking photographs where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. In remote teaching, advising, chatting, and other engagement in course activities remotely, there is a reasonable expectation that photographing, screen capture, or other copying methods or recordings will not occur without express permission from all participants. A violation subjects a student to the disciplinary process. Do not record your courses, do not take screen shots of your classes, professors, or classmates, and do not release, post, email, text, or otherwise share or sell course materials to others.
Grading
Your grade will be based on your performance on the final exam and to a limited degree, your class participation.
Accommodations
UCLA Law strives to provide accommodations in a way that supports students with disabilities while maintaining their anonymity and the fundamental nature of our law program. As such, students needing academic accommodations should not contact their professors directly, but contact Carmina Ocampo, Director of Student Life or the UCLA Center for Accessible Education (CAE) When possible, students should start this process within the first two weeks of the semester, as reasonable notice is needed to coordinate accommodations.
Resources for Health and Wellness
Students needing assistance with medical or mental health issues, substance abuse, anxiety or depression or other health-related matters should contact the Office for Student Affairs, UCLA Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) at 310-825-0768 (Courtney Walters is the counselor regularly assigned to the law school) or the Ashe Student Health & Wellness Center at 310-825-4073.
Reading Assignments
Reading assignments are below. As it’s still a new class, I’ve left some flexibility in the schedule to match our pace. Expect the timing of assignments to change as needed.
| # | Topic | Assignment |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction: Terminology, Why AI Law?, AI’s Many Contexts, Uses, and Harms, and A Sociotechnical Perspective | Ch. 1 |
| 2 | Tech Primer: Decision Trees Case Study: COMPAS | Part I intro; Ch.2 |
| 3 | AI and Due Process: Government Use of Algorithms in Civil Cases and Benefits Administration | Ch. 3 |
| 4 | Bias and Discrimination I: Primer: How AI Can Discriminate; Disparate Impact | Ch. 4.1–4.2 |
| 5 | Bias and Discrimination II: The Discriminatory AI Decision | Ch. 4.3 |
| 6 | Regulating AI Decisionmaking I: Individual Rights, GDPR Deeper Dive | Ch. 5.1–5.3 |
| 7 | Regulating AI Decisionmaking II: Systemic Regulation & Transparency; Tech Primer: Neural Networks | Ch. 5.4, Part II intro, Ch. 6 |
| 8 | Torts I: The Technologies; Products Liability | Ch. 7 (thru Branham & notes in 7.2) |
| 9 | Torts II: Product Liability, Negligence | Ch. 7.2 (the rest), 7.3 |
| 10 | Torts III: Strict Liability; AI and Product Safety | Ch. 7.4; Ch. 8 |
| 11 | Tech Primer: Generative AI | Part III intro; Ch. 9 |
| 12 | Copyright I: Introduction and AI as Author | Ch. 10.1–10.2 |
| 13 | Copyright II: Infringement and Fair Use | Ch. 10.3 |
| 14 | AI and Speech I: Introduction to the First Amendment; The Coverage Question: Using AI to Produce Covered Speech | Ch. 11.1-11.2.A |
| 15 | AI and Speech II: The Coverage Question: When Are AI Outputs Covered by the FIrst Amendment?; Scrutiny and Protection: An Introduction to First Amendment Scrutiny | Ch. 11.2.B, 11.3.A |
| 16 | AI and Speech III: Scrutiny and Protection: The Historic Exceptions and the Role of Human Intent | Ch. 11.3.B |
| 17 | Synthetic Content I: Risks and Harms; Appropriation/Impersonation; Elections and NCII | Ch. 12.1-12.3 |
| 18 | Synthetic Content II: Platform Policy; First Amendment | Ch. 12.5-12.6 |
| 19 | Regulating Generative AI: EU AI Act, Provenance and Watermarks, Open-Weight Models | Ch. 13.2-13.4 |
| 20 | AI and the Fourth Amendment | Part IV intro, Ch. 14.1-14.3 |
| 21 | AI and Data Protection | Ch. 15 (selections TBD) |
| 22 | Case Study: Facial Recognition Technology | Ch. 16 (selections TBD) |
| 21 | General AI Regulation I: The EU AI Act | Part V intro, Ch. 18.1 |
| 22 | General AI Regulation II: Other Models | Ch. 18 (the rest), Ch. 19 (selections TBD) |
| 23 | AI Soft Law: Principles and Standards | Ch. 19 (the rest) |
| 26 | TBD | TBD |
Andrew Selbst 