When: Third Friday of each month at 1 PM Central Time (sometimes fourth Friday; next workshop: Friday, May 16, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Central Time)
What: First 90 minutes: Two presentations of CS+Law works in progress or new papers with open Q&A. Last 30 minutes: Networking.
Where: Zoom
Who: CS+Law faculty, postdocs, PhD students, and other students (1) enrolled in or who have completed a graduate degree in CS or Law and (2) engaged in CS+Law research intended for publication.
A Steering Committee of CS+Law faculty from Berkeley, Boston U., U. Chicago, Cornell, Georgetown, MIT, North Carolina Central, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn, Technion, and UCLA organizes the CS+Law Monthly Workshop. A different university serves as the chair for each monthly program and sets the agenda.
Why: The Steering Committee’s goals include building community, facilitating the exchange of ideas, and getting students involved. To accomplish this, we ask that participants commit to attending regularly.
Computer Science + Law is a rapidly growing area. It is increasingly common that a researcher in one of these fields must interact with the other discipline. For example, there is significant research in each field regarding the law and regulation of computation, the use of computation in legal systems and governments, and the representation of law and legal reasoning. There has been a significant increase in interdisciplinary research collaborations between researchers from CS and Law. Our goal is to create a forum for the exchange of ideas in a collegial environment that promotes building community, collaboration, and research that helps to further develop CS+Law as a field.
Please join us for our next CS+Law Research Workshop online on Friday, May 16, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Central Time (Chicago Time).
Workshop 33 Organizers: Georgetown (Paul Ohm)
Agenda:
20-minute presentation--Danny Wilf-Townsend
10-minute discussion--Ignacio Cofone 15-minute Q&A
20-minute presentation--Clare Huntington
10-minute discussion--James Grimmelmann
15-minute Q&A
30-minute open discussion
Presentation 1: Artificial Intelligence and Aggregate Litigation
Presenter: Danny Wilf-Townsend, Associate Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Abstract:
The era of AI litigation has begun, and it is already clear that the class action will have a distinctive role to play. AI-powered tools are often valuable because they can be deployed at scale. And the harms they cause often exist at scale as well, pointing to the class action as a key device for resolving the correspondingly numerous potential legal claims. This article presents the first general account of the complex interplay between aggregation and artificial intelligence.
First, the article identifies a pair of effects that the use of AI tools is likely to have on the availability of class actions to pursue legal claims. While the use of increased automation by defendants will tend to militate in favor of class certification, the increased individualization enabled by AI tools will cut against it. These effects, in turn, will be strongly influenced by the substantive laws governing AI tools—especially by whether liability attaches “upstream” or “downstream” in a given course of conduct, and by the kinds of causal showings that must be made to establish liability.
After identifying these influences, the article flips the usual script and describes how, rather than merely being a vehicle for enforcing substantive law, aggregation could actually enable new types of liability regimes. AI tools can create harms that are only demonstrable at the level of an affected group, which is likely to frustrate traditional individual claims. Aggregation creates opportunities to prove harm and assign remedies at the group level, providing a path to address this difficult problem. Policymakers hoping for fair and effective regulations should therefore attend to procedure, and aggregation in particular, as they write the substantive laws governing AI use.
Discussion by Ignacio Cofone, Professor of Law and Regulation of AI, University of Oxford, Faculty of Law
Presentation 2: AI Companions and Family Law
Presenter: Clare Huntington, Barbara Aronstein Black Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Abstract:
Virtual friends and lovers powered by artificial intelligence are rapidly moving to the center of our emotional and social lives. Millions of people turn to AI companions every day for conversation, romance, sexual intimacy, therapy, and education. AI companionship holds promise, potentially reducing loneliness, supporting people without access to mental health treatment, helping students learn, and offering judgment-free space for sensitive conversations. But AI companionship also raises significant concerns. The technology’s addictiveness can undermine human relationships. Therapy bots may prove more harmful than helpful. AI companions can be emotionally abusive. And their access to the most intimate aspects of users’ lives poses distinct privacy challenges.
As lawmakers and policy experts reckon with the benefits and serious risks of AI companionship, they must account for the distinctive aspects of AI companionship. Unlike interacting with other forms of AI—being driven in an autonomous vehicle, say, or getting help with coding—people are in a relationship with their AI companion. Any regulatory approach must address this relationality, especially the human drive to attach to others and the vulnerability that comes with that attachment.
Legal scholars have long argued that the regulation of technology must account for relationality. This Article demonstrates that family law—the law of relationships—is a ready means to do so. As a foundational matter, any effort to regulate AI companionship must explain why the legal system should act. Family law helps answer this question by debunking the widespread belief that relationships are purely a private matter. Family law establishes the strong state interest in nurturing positive relationships and addressing harm in abusive and neglectful relationships. These state interests apply not only to human relationships but also to human-AI relationships.
Family law also helps answer the question of how to regulate AI companionship. Family law recognizes, for example, that legal intervention is often necessary to shift the power imbalance that facilitates harmful relationships—a lesson that should be applied to the power imbalance between technology companies and users of AI companions. And family law teaches that expertise and licensing are necessary for mental health experts to work with a person at any age, although AI companions marketed for therapeutic purposes have not been subject to similar gatekeeping. Finally, family law holds lessons for advocacy, showing that it is possible to advance reasonable regulation notwithstanding the polarized political climate and considerable antipathy to regulating the technology industry, at least at the federal level. Family law points, for example, towards state-level interventions rather than action by Congress or federal agencies, and it demonstrates the broader acceptance of regulations targeted at minors than at adults.
In short, AI companionship is a new kind of relationship, bringing profound and unrecognized change to the landscape of our intimate lives. Legal scholars and policymakers must start grappling with this new world now. Family law holds great promise to accelerate that reckoning.
Discussion by James Grimmelmann, Tessler Family Professor of Digital and Information Law, Cornell Tech and Law
Join our group to get the agenda and Zoom information for each meeting and engage in the CS+Law discussion.
Submit a proposed topic to present. We strongly encourage the presentation of works in progress, although we will consider the presentation of more polished and published projects.
Friday, September 20, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: Northwestern)
Friday, October 18, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: UC Berkeley)
Friday, November 15, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: University of Chicago)
Friday, January 17, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: UPenn)
Friday, February 21, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: Cornell)
Friday, March 21, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: Tel Aviv University + Harvard)
Friday, April 18, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: TBD)
Friday, May 16, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: Georgetown)
Ran Canetti (Boston U.)
Bryan Choi (Ohio State)
Aloni Cohen (U. Chicago)
April Dawson (North Carolina Central)
James Grimmelmann (Cornell Tech)
Jason Hartline (Northwestern)
Dan Linna (Northwestern)
Paul Ohm (Georgetown)
Pamela Samuelson (Berkeley)
Inbal Talgam-Cohen (Technion - Israel Institute of Technology)
John Villasenor (UCLA)
Rebecca Wexler (Berkeley)
Christopher Yoo (Penn)
Northwestern Professors Jason Hartline and Dan Linna convened an initial meeting of 21 CS+Law faculty at various universities on August 17, 2021 to propose a series of monthly CS+Law research conferences. Hartline and Linna sought volunteers to sit on a steering committee. Hartline, Linna, and their Northwestern colleagues provide the platform and administrative support for the series.