Prerequisites: None

Exam Type: No Exam

This course offers an introduction to the rapidly growing field of AI law and governance from an international perspective. The first segment provides an overview of the main frontiers of global legal and governance developments, covering international AI-norm-building efforts by organizations such as the OECD, UNESCO, and Council of Europe, as well as G8 and G20. The second segment focuses on the highly influential EU AI Act, which will also apply to US and non-European AI developers who intend to market their products in the EU. The third segment examines other important legislative initiatives in the international realm, including in Canada, Brazil, China, and Japan, and engages in cross-jurisdictional pattern analysis. By way of synthesis, the course introduces a navigation aid for students confronted with the challenge of understanding the implications of non-US laws in the globalized AI economy.

Through a mix of presentations, guest lectures, and discussions, the course offers students a robust substantive understanding of the contours and drivers of the most critical legal and governance frameworks currently under development in major economies outside the US, which have the potential also to shape US practices. Students will learn in greater detail about the EU AI Act, which is expected to exhibit extraterritorial effects and set a new global gold standard of AI regulation akin to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In addition to gaining a substantive understanding of major hard and soft law efforts internationally, students will learn to identify structural normative patterns and dynamics shared across a diverse set of AI legal and regulatory efforts.