Analytical Paper Optional: All enrolled students have the option of completing a research paper of at least 20-25 pages, with faculty and peer review of a substantially complete draft. This paper can be used to satisfy the analytical paper requirement for J.D. students. Students who choose to satisfy the analytical paper requirement through this course may not also count the course toward their experiential learning requirement.

Prerequisite: This course is intended for students intending to work in the tech industry, a related nonprofit or government entity, or a tech legal practice upon graduation. Preference will be given to students who have taken at least one prior course while at HLS (or, if a cross-registrant, in their own course of study) on a tech-related topic, and ideally developed some background in artificial intelligence. Admission to the course is by permission of the instructors.

Exam Type: No Exam

Artificial intelligence is not simply a distinct technological phenomenon. It is a battleground of competing values, incentives, and worldviews. Questions as fundamental as “What is AI?” remain deeply contested, in part because vastly different foundational premises fracture thinking and scholarship around AI. Experts, regulators, and the public have unsettled moral commitments, political and professional priorities, risk tolerances, and divergent understandings of how AI is progressing and how far it can go.

Three core intellectual communities currently shape the public conversation around AI: Accelerationists who generally believe that artificial intelligence will dramatically improve the human experience; Safetyists who are concerned about its potential catastrophic or existential risks; and Skeptics who doubt claims of AI’s transformative impact and urge a focus on existing issues, including the replication of biases.

What can we learn from the tensions and interactions among these divergent worldviews? This course will explore some of the most fundamental debates in the legal and corporate governance of frontier AI models and systems. Through discussion with guests representing each view and analysis of relevant legal texts, students will be equipped with the intellectual tools to map, compare, and critique each perspective’s underlying assumptions and dependencies.

We will begin the semester with an intensive introduction intended to level-set students on the technical dimensions of AI. The course will further engage with some of the most advanced models and tools – many of which have become part of the public imagination – to examine what gives some current AI builders and leaders pause and why others believe AI will accelerate humanity’s progress. Students will then be challenged to think through interventions, whether in private or public policy, standards-setting, institution-building, or engineering, that might accord with their sense of the development of AI in the public interest.

Admission to the course is by permission of the instructors. Students should complete the application at this link: here. Applications should be completed by 11:59 pm on Friday, 31st October 2025, for Friday, 21st November 2025admission decisions. Rolling admission may be considered thereafter.

Note: This course will meet on average of three hours per week. The full schedule will be posted the course Canvas page closer to the start of the term.