AI and Data Law

The effect of AI on law and regulation grows as AI shapes critical decisions in areas such as finance, criminal justice, employment, healthcare, housing, and online platforms. As generative AI demonstrates, AI both facilitates significant innovation and raises concerns across domains. This option challenges the notion that AI law is merely about AI-specific regulations, such as the AI Act. Fundamentally, it connects AI, which is created and shaped by data, to the regulation of data, and it illustrates that the concerns that AI raises across domains are largely common. This option will take a comparative approach in all seminars.

This option is divided in two parts. The first is a series of seminars that connect AI, which is created and shaped by data, to the regulation of data. It examines data protection law by focusing on the information economy, including domestic and international legislation, case law, regulatory strategies across jurisdictions, and reform proposals. We will engage critically with the fundamentals of data protection across jurisdictions, the impact of AI on these principles, and the rethinking of harm under data protection law in the age of AI. Students will learn (a) data protection law, which increases in importance as data takes over aspects of social and economic life, and (b) what the successes and failures of regulating personal information teach us about regulating AI.

In seminars during the second part, we will engage with case studies highlighting different legal domains affected by AI. We will explore both how AI impacts these different areas of law in similar ways and how these areas, not designed with AI in mind, effectively regulate AI. We will examine interrelated legal questions broader than AI-specific Acts, while also including specific legislation such as the AI Act. Topics will include, for example: discrimination; transparency; measurement; AI-human interactions; and responsibility. Most sessions will include: (a) an introduction to the factual and technological context, (b) a review of legal aspects, and (c) an interactive discussion or exercise analysing how the law does and should apply.

Assessment is by way of a submission.