Technology and the Public Interest

1 credits · Law

In the course Technology and the Public Interest 2027, we ask a deceptively simple question with dramatic stakes: should societies regulate AI and related new digital technologies -- and if so, how? During the Spring term, the course brings students into direct conversation with the people shaping this debate who join the course as guests who have spent careers wrestling with these problems from different vantage points. Students will examine concrete controversies -- from self-regulation plans to slow AI development to state attorneys general suing Meta over child safety, from the fight over Section 230 nationally to state-level legislative efforts, to the EU's AI Act and the global ripple of AI's development -- not as abstract case studies but as live disputes with unsettled outcomes. Alongside these policy questions, the course also turns inward, asking how AI is already changing the practice of law itself and what it means to prepare for a legal career in which these tools are a given rather than a novelty. Students should expect an interactive, participatory, seminar-style class. The course culminates in group presentations that require them to take a position on one of the term's central debates. No prior technical background is assumed; what the course does assume is curiosity about how law, technology, and public policy are being renegotiated in real time in the age of AI, and a willingness to wrestle with these themes both to understand them on their merits and their applicability to the practice of law itself. Elements used in grading: Attendance, class participation, written assignments, final paper.