Past Events
4/12/2021
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM
“Authorship Disrupted: AI Authors in Copyright and First Amendment Law”
Margot Kaminski
Associate Professor of Law, University of Colorado Law
Abstract
Technology is often characterized as an outside force, with essential qualities, acting on the law. But the law, through both doctrine and theory, constructs the meaning of the technology it encounters. A particular feature of a particular technology disrupts the law only because the law has been structured in a way that makes that feature relevant. The law, in other words, plays a significant role in shaping its own disruption. This Essay is a study of how a particular technology, artificial intelligence, is framed by both copyright law and the First Amendment. How the algorithmic author is framed by these two areas illustrates the importance of legal context and legal construction to the disruption story.
About the Colloquium
Machine learning and automated decision-making technologies (colloquially dubbed "artificial intelligence" or "AI") are an increasingly integral feature of social systems. These technologies raise novel legal questions regarding oversight, individual rights, liability and justice. The UCI Law Colloquium on AI & Law brings to campus leading thinkers engaged with these issues.
Zoom details will be sent upon registration.
This activity has been approved for MCLE in the amount of 1.0 hour, as appropriate to the content of the activity. UCI Law is a State Bar approved MCLE provider and certifies that this activity conforms to the standards for approved education activities prescribed by the rules and regulations of the State Bar of California governing MCLE. A link to the MCLE Record of Attendance will be sent via Zoom chat at the end of the webinar. A link to the MCLE Certificate of Attendance will be sent in the confirmation email upon completion of the Record of Attendance. Attendees must have participated in the program in its entirety to receive MCLE credit. Partial credit will not be given. For more details, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
Video Recording
3/29/2021
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM
“The Paradox of Automation as Anti-Bias Intervention”
Ifeoma Ajunwa
Associate Professor of Law, UNC School of Law
Abstract
A received wisdom is that automated decision-making serves as an anti-bias intervention. The conceit is that removing humans from the decision-making process will also eliminate human bias. The paradox, however, is that in some instances, automated decision- making has served to replicate and amplify bias. With a case study of the algorithmic capture of hiring as a heuristic device, this Article provides a taxonomy of problematic features associated with algorithmic decision-making as anti-bias intervention and argues that those features are at odds with the fundamental principle of equal opportunity in employment. To examine these problematic features within the context of algorithmic hiring and to explore potential legal approaches to rectifying them, the Article brings together two streams of legal scholarship: law & technology studies and employment & labor law.
Counterintuitively, the Article contends that the framing of algorithmic bias as a technical problem is misguided. Rather, the Article’s central claim is that bias is introduced in the hiring process, in large part, due to an American legal tradition of deference to employers, especially allowing for such nebulous hiring criterion as “cultural fit.” The Article observes the lack of legal frameworks to account for the emerging technological capabilities of hiring tools which make it difficult to detect bias. The Article discusses several new approaches to hold liable for employment discrimination both employers and makers of algorithmic hiring systems. Particularly related to Title VII, the Article proposes that in legal reasoning corollary to extant tort doctrines, an employer’s failure to audit and correct its automated hiring platforms for disparate impact should serve as prima facie evidence of discriminatory intent, for the proposed new doctrine of discrimination per se. The Article also considers approaches separate from employment law, such as establishing consumer legal protections for job applicants that would mandate their access to the dossier of information consulted by automated hiring systems in making the employment decision.
About the Colloquium
Machine learning and automated decision-making technologies (colloquially dubbed "artificial intelligence" or "AI") are an increasingly integral feature of social systems. These technologies raise novel legal questions regarding oversight, individual rights, liability and justice. The UCI Law Colloquium on AI & Law brings to campus leading thinkers engaged with these issues.
Zoom details will be sent upon registration.
This activity has been approved for MCLE in the amount of 1.0 hour, as appropriate to the content of the activity. UCI Law is a State Bar approved MCLE provider and certifies that this activity conforms to the standards for approved education activities prescribed by the rules and regulations of the State Bar of California governing MCLE. A link to the MCLE Record of Attendance will be sent via Zoom chat at the end of the webinar. A link to the MCLE Certificate of Attendance will be sent in the confirmation email upon completion of the Record of Attendance. Attendees must have participated in the program in its entirety to receive MCLE credit. Partial credit will not be given. For more details, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
Video Recording
3/8/2021
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM
Rebecca Crootof
Assistant Professor of Law, University of Richmond School of Law
Abstract
Autonomous weapon systems are often described either as more independent versions of weapons already in use or as humanoid robotic soldiers. In many ways, these analogies are useful. Analogies and allusions to popular culture make new technologies seem accessible, identify potential dangers, and buttress desired narratives. Most importantly from a legal perspective, analogical reasoning helps stretch existing law to cover developing technologies and minimize law-free zones.
But all potential analogiesweapon, combatant, child soldier, animal combatantfail to address the legal issues raised by autonomous weapon systems, largely because they all misrepresent legally salient traits. Conceiving of autonomous weapon systems as weapons minimizes their capacity for independent and self-determined action, while the combatant, child soldier, and animal combatant comparisons overemphasize it. Furthermore, these discrete and embodied analogies limit our ability to think imaginatively about this new technology and anticipate how it might develop, thereby impeding our ability to properly regulate it.
We cannot simply graft legal regimes crafted to regulate other entities onto autonomous weapon systems. Instead, as is often the case when analogical reasoning cannot justifiably stretch extant law to answer novel legal questions, new supplemental law is needed. The sooner we escape the confines of these insufficient analogies, the sooner we can create appropriate and effective regulations for autonomous weapon systems.
About the Colloquium
Machine learning and automated decision-making technologies (colloquially dubbed artificial intelligence or AI) are an increasingly integral feature of social systems. These technologies raise novel legal questions regarding oversight, individual rights, liability and justice. The UCI Law Colloquium on AI Law brings to campus leading thinkers engaged with these issues.
Zoom details will be sent upon registration.
This activity has been approved for MCLE in the amount of 1.0 hour, as appropriate to the content of the activity. UCI Law is a State Bar approved MCLE provider and certifies that this activity conforms to the standards for approved education activities prescribed by the rules and regulations of the State Bar of California governing MCLE. A link to the MCLE Record of Attendance will be sent via Zoom chat at the end of the webinar. A link to the MCLE Certificate of Attendance will be sent in the confirmation email upon completion of the Record of Attendance. Attendees must have participated in the program in its entirety to receive MCLE credit. Partial credit will not be given. For more details, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
Video Recording
2/8/2021
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM
“Data Informed Duties in AI Development”
Frank Pasquale
Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School
Abstract
Law should help direct—and not merely constrain—the development of artificial intelligence (AI). One path to influence is the development of standards of care both supplemented and informed by rigorous regulatory guidance. Such standards are particularly important given the potential for inaccurate and inappropriate data to contaminate machine learning. Firms relying on faulty data can be required to compensate those harmed by that data use—and should be subject to punitive damages when such use is repeated or willful. Regulatory standards for data collection, analysis, use, and stewardship can inform and complement generalist judges. Such regulation will not only provide guidance to industry to help it avoid preventable accidents. It will also assist a judiciary that is increasingly called upon to develop common law in response to legal disputes arising out of the deployment of AI.
About the Colloquium
Machine learning and automated decision-making technologies (colloquially dubbed "artificial intelligence" or "AI") are an increasingly integral feature of social systems. These technologies raise novel legal questions regarding oversight, individual rights, liability and justice. The UCI Law Colloquium on AI & Law brings to campus leading thinkers engaged with these issues.
Zoom details will be sent upon registration.
This activity has been approved for MCLE in the amount of 1.0 hour, as appropriate to the content of the activity. UCI Law is a State Bar approved MCLE provider and certifies that this activity conforms to the standards for approved education activities prescribed by the rules and regulations of the State Bar of California governing MCLE. A link to the MCLE Record of Attendance will be sent via Zoom chat at the end of the webinar. A link to the MCLE Certificate of Attendance will be sent in the confirmation email upon completion of the Record of Attendance. Attendees must have participated in the program in its entirety to receive MCLE credit. Partial credit will not be given. For more details, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
Video Recording
1/25/2021
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM
“Technologically Distorted Conceptions of Punishment”
Jessica M. Eaglin
Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University Bloomington Maurer School of Law
Comments by Professor Kaaryn Gustafson, Director, Center on Law, Equality, and Race.
Abstract
Much recent work in academic literature and policy discussions suggests that the proliferation of actuarial-meaning statistical-assessments of a defendant's recidivism risk in state sentencing structures is problematic. Yet scholars and policymakers focus on changes in technology over time while ignoring the effects of these tools on society. This Article shifts the focus away from technology to society in order to reframe debates. It asserts that sentencing technologies subtly change key social concepts that shape punishment and society. These same conceptual transformations preserve problematic features of the sociohistorical phenomenon of mass incarceration. By connecting technological interventions and conceptual transformations, this Article exposes an obscured threat posed by the proliferation of risk tools as sentencing reform. As sentencing technologies transform sentencing outcomes, the tools also alter society's language and concerns about punishment. Thus, actuarial risk tools as technological sentencing reform not only excise society 's deeper issues of race, class, and power from debates. The tools also strip society of a language to resist the status quo by changing notions of justice along the way.
About the Colloquium
Machine learning and automated decision-making technologies (colloquially dubbed "artificial intelligence" or "AI") are an increasingly integral feature of social systems. These technologies raise novel legal questions regarding oversight, individual rights, liability and justice. The UCI Law Colloquium on AI & Law brings to campus leading thinkers engaged with these issues.
Zoom details will be sent upon registration.
This activity has been approved for MCLE in the amount of 1.0 hour, as appropriate to the content of the activity. UCI Law is a State Bar approved MCLE provider and certifies that this activity conforms to the standards for approved education activities prescribed by the rules and regulations of the State Bar of California governing MCLE. A link to the MCLE Record of Attendance will be sent via Zoom chat at the end of the webinar. A link to the MCLE Certificate of Attendance will be sent in the confirmation email upon completion of the Record of Attendance. Attendees must have participated in the program in its entirety to receive MCLE credit. Partial credit will not be given. For more details, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
Video Recording
3/9/2020
5:30:00 PM to 7:15:00 PM
UCI Beall Applied Innovation
Julie Cohen, Mark Claster Mamolen Professor of Law and Technology at Georgetown Law, will discuss her new book "Between Truth and Power: The Legal Construction of Informational Capitalism."
About Prof. Cohen
Prof. Cohen teaches and writes about surveillance, privacy and data protection, intellectual property, information platforms, and the ways that networked information and communication technologies are reshaping legal institutions. She is the author of Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2019), Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code, and the Play of Everyday Practice (Yale University Press, 2012), and numerous articles and book chapters, and she is a co- author of Copyright in a Global Information Economy (Wolters Kluwer, 5th ed. 2020). She is a faculty co- director of the Institute for Technology Law and Policy, a faculty co-director of the Center on Privacy and Technology, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Prior to joining the Law Center faculty in 1999, Professor Cohen was Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She previously practiced with the San Francisco firm of McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen, where she specialized in intellectual property litigation. She was law clerk to Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
2/3/2020
5:30:00 PM to 7:15:00 PM
UCI Beall Applied Innovation
Mark Lemley, William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, will present "You Might Be a Robot."
About Prof. Lemley
Mark Lemley is the William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and as affiliated faculty in the Symbolic Systems program. He teaches intellectual property, patent law, trademark law, antitrust, the law of robotics and AI, video game law, and remedies. He is the author of eight books and 175 articles, including the two-volume treatise IP and Antitrust. His works have been cited more than 270 times by courts, including 15 times by the United States Supreme Court, and more than 17,000 times in books and law review articles, making him the most-cited scholar in IP law and one of the five most cited legal scholars of all time. He has published 9 of the 100 most-cited law review articles of the last twenty years, more than any other scholar. His articles have appeared in 23 of the top 25 law reviews, in top economic journals such as the American Economic Review and the Review of Economics and Statistics, and in multiple peer-reviewed and specialty journals. They have been reprinted throughout the world, and translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Italian, and Danish. He has taught IP law to federal and state judges at numerous Federal Judicial Center and ABA programs, has testified eight times before Congress, and has filed more than 50 amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and the federal circuit courts.
Mark is a founding partner of Durie Tangri LLP. He litigates and counsels clients in all areas of intellectual property, antitrust, and internet law. He has argued 27 federal appellate cases and numerous district court cases as well as before the California Supreme Court. He has participated in more than three dozen cases in the United States Supreme Court as counsel or amici. His client base is diverse, including Genentech, Dykes on Bikes, artists, and nearly every significant Internet company.
Mark is a founder of Lex Machina, Inc., a startup company that provides litigation data and analytics to law firms, companies, courts, and policymakers. Lex Machina was acquired by Lexis in December 2015.
Mark has been named California Lawyer’s Attorney of the Year twice. He received the California State Bar’s inaugural IP Vanguard Award. He won the 2018 World Technology Award for Law. In 2017 he received the P.J. Federico Award from the Patent and Trademark Office Society. Back when he was young, he was named a Young Global Leader by the Davos World Economic Forum and Berkeley Law School’s Young Alumnus of the Year. He has been recognized as one of the top 50 litigators in the country under 45 and one of the 25 most influential people in IP by American Lawyer, one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the nation by the National Law Journal, and one of the 10 most admired attorneys in IP by IP360. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, and the IP Hall of Fame.
Mark clerked for Judge Dorothy Nelson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and has practiced law in Silicon Valley with Brown & Bain and with Fish & Richardson and in San Francisco with Keker & Van Nest. He has previously held faculty positions at Berkeley Law School and the University of Texas School of Law. In his spare time, Mark enjoys cooking, travel, yoga, and feeding his addiction to video games (at this writing, Borderlands 3).
1/13/2020
5:30:00 PM to 7:00:00 PM
401 E. Peltason Drive, Suite 1000, Irvine, CA 92697-8000
Margaret Hu, Associate Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, will discuss her forthcoming book "The Big Data Constitution: Constitutional Reform in the Cybersurveillance State."
About Prof. Hu
Prof. Hu's research interests include the intersection of immigration policy, national security, cybersurveillance, and civil rights. Previously, she served as senior policy advisor for the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and also served as special policy counsel in the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC), Civil Rights Division, U. S. Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C. As Special Policy Counsel, Hu managed a team of attorneys and investigators in the enforcement of the anti-discrimination provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), and was responsible for federal immigration policy review and coordination for OSC.
Hu received her B.A. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from the University of Kansas and her J.D. from Duke Law School. She is a Truman Scholar, Foreign Language Area Studies Scholar, and recipient of a Duke Law School Merit Scholarship. She clerked for Judge Rosemary Barkett on U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and subsequently joined the U.S. Department of Justice through Attorney General's Honors Program under Attorney General Janet Reno.
Hu has served in various leadership positions, including vice chair, Kansas Commission for National and Community Service, by gubernatorial appointment; Board of Directors, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum; Board of Directors, University of Kansas Memorial Corporation; National Governing Board, National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum; and Dean's Advisory Council, Duke Law School.