Science and Technology Law Commons^™

The Law And Ai As An “Apex Collaborator”: Legal Frameworks For Optimized Cooperation, David S. Filippi, Bill Tomlinson, Andrew W. Torrance

FIU Law Review

Law fundamentally exists to enable human cooperation, providing frameworks for everything from basic contracts to complex international agreements. As artificial intelligence systems grow more sophisticated, they may enable new ways that collaborative activity can occur. We posit the possibility of a new kind of AI entity: the “Apex Collaborator,” a computational system with capabilities for cooperation and partnership that are superior, in at least some ways, to those of humans. Just as apex predators shape the ecosystems in which they live through predation, Apex Collaborators would shape human-AI networks through their ability to enhance peaceful coexistence, collective problem-solving, and shared …

Owning Data: Semantic Control As Inaccess To Information, Zvikomborero Chadambuka

FIU Law Review

This Article discusses the impacts of the introduction of a data ownership scheme on access to information. It does so with reference to the distinction between data, defined as some representation of information by a specific medium (the syntactic level), and the information itself (the semantic level). With respect to data, it then looks at the difference between standard property rights and intellectual property (IP) rights, similarly assessing impacts on access to information. Private control at the semantic level is bad policy as it effects particularly serious limitations, relative to private control at the syntactic level, on the availability of …

Let’S Talk About The Biological Reality Of Sex, Baby, John Parsi

FIU Law Review

Sex is at the very core of individual identity. It affects the conception of the self and the way others view the individual. Every day, one’s sex may open and close doors, access to communities, and opportunities. Laws that define sex may affirm scientific knowledge and protect people, or threaten to unravel the facts and the reality of sex. A deep unmooring of sex is underway, and this Article aims to halt it. On day one of the current presidential term, January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order on “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological …

Digital Dialectic: Why Every “Ai-Generated” Work Has A Human Author, Lea Bishop

FIU Law Review

Are ChatGPT and Midjourney tools or creators? Ownership of billions of AI-assisted creative outputs hangs in the balance. Copyright scholars have long debated whether an autonomous artificial intelligence could qualify as an author, but this remains a hypothetical question. Despite widespread application of the term “AI” to software products of the 2020s, autonomously creative artificial intelligence still does not exist. Today’s commercial AI products—such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, Dall-E, Copilot, Gemini, Claude, Suno, Perplexity, and Lumo—are simply the newest generation of computer software. They do not qualify as “artificial intelligence” in either the scientific or science fiction senses. They are mere …

Abuse Of Contract: A Proposal For A New Cause Of Action, Miriam A. Cherry

Faculty Publications

With the growth of online commerce and the platform economy, many companies are including provisions in their online terms and conditions that extend far beyond what reasonable consumers would expect. Some terms and conditions purport to bind customers to separate contracts in future transactions that have little to do with the first contract. Other boilerplate purports to cover family members of the customer who created an account. Some retailers have argued that people shopping in their brick-and-mortar stores are subject to terms and conditions because those shoppers had at some point previously created an online account. For example, Disney argued …

Human Rights On Pause: Assessing The Cbp Digital Metering Process And Obligations Of Non-Refoulement Beyond Borders, Brandon Delia

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

Migrants are once again being told to wait in line before seeking their right to the asylum process. In 2023, the Biden administration introduced the CBP One app as a new requirement for asylum seekers approaching the US-Mexico border. Not long after, it evolved into a strict legal prerequisite where without a CBP One appointment, migrants faced either immediate turnbacks or, if they nonetheless attempted to seek asylum defensively after entry, expedited removal and a potential five-year bar on reentry. Those who managed to register often waited months in cartel-controlled border towns, risking extortion, kidnapping, or worse. Paired with CBP’s …

Artificial Intelligence And Automated Decision-Making In Employment: The Future Of The Embattled Disparate Impact Theory Of Discrimination Under Title Vii, Daniel S. Alcorn

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

Artificial intelligence now makes core employment decisions—from resume screening and video interviews to promotion and termination—yet Title VII’s disparate impact doctrine was built for paper tests, not black-box models. This Article argues that, while under attack by the Trump Administration and a minority of the U.S. Supreme Court, disparate impact remains indispensable but increasingly inadequate without adaptation. We show how algorithmic opacity frustrates causation, vendor delegation diffuses liability, predictive-accuracy claims distort “business necessity,” and trade-secret barriers impede proof of less-discriminatory alternatives. Drawing on emerging U.S. and comparative regimes, we propose a practical toolkit: (1) treat the algorithmic system as the …

A Law Enforcement Paradigm For The New Form Of Money, Jim Harper

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

Over the last two centuries, transfers of money have evolved from movements of tangible things to digital communications events. Over the last half-century, financial surveillance law has taken root. The product of the two trends is a comprehensive, global financial surveillance regime that has substantial costs in both dollar terms and in values such as privacy, free speech, and autonomy. Those costs appear to vastly outstrip the benefits of such surveillance. Along with its infirmity as policy, general financial surveillance stands on shaky constitutional ground in the United States. It impedes the full development of digital forms of money and …

Exploit Machina, Andrea Matwyshyn

Faculty Scholarship

Over half a century ago, Hannah Arendt cautioned us to “think what we are doing” when we build new technologies. Engaging with her counsel and a set of historical case studies, this Article frames what it calls exploit machina problems. Exploit machina refers to situations where broken technologies and broken governance combine to irreparably harm the public. In other words, exploit machina involves organizational choices to knowingly leverage technology as part of legally problematic conduct, including various forms of fraud. In the language of data science, exploit machina situations implicate strategic decisions in building and managing artificial intelligence (AI); they …

Artificial Elections: How Artificial Intelligence Can Affect Elections And Decide Our Future, Ryan D. Granger

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis examines the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in democratic elections, highlighting both its transformative potential and its associated risks. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of existing literature, the study explores how AI is increasingly integrated into political campaigns, election administration, and voter engagement. Key benefits include enhanced data analysis, personalized political messaging, and improved efficiency in campaign operations. AI also supports real-time fact-checking and more accurate vote tabulation, which can strengthen transparency and trust in electoral processes. However, the thesis emphasizes that these advantages are accompanied by significant challenges. AI technologies enable the rapid creation and dissemination …

The Rise Of Biometrics And The Erosion Of Privacy: A Case Study Of Biometric Systems In Amusement Parks, Sarah A. Yarger

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis explores data privacy concerns surrounding the implementation of facial recognition technology using amusement and theme parks as a case study. With the lack of general federal guidelines, states have been left to address this rapid expansion of technology. This situation has left consumers with inconsistent protections and varied levels of liability for corporations. This thesis will explore the current gaps of legislation on legal use of facial recognition technology using amusement and theme parks as the context of focus. As this technology continues to advance and become normalized in society, the inconsistency in privacy protections amongst states suggests …

The Apathy Economy: Patents, Advertising, And Consumer Indifference, Gavin J. Milczarek-Desai, Derek E. Bambauer

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

Patents function as signals as well as rights to exclude. They inform competitors, investors, employees, and consumers about the invention and its owner. How this information affects consumers is not well understood. Existing studies disagree about how advertising a product or service as patented, or patent pending, affects the price consumers will pay. This Article offers the first major empirical study of that question andfinds that consumers behave with surprising rationality: they will not pay any price premium for a patented product. A product's patent status conveys little information about whether it is superior to competing offerings. The results hold …

The Shifting Economics Of Influencer Sponsorship Disclosures, Uri Y. Hacohen

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

Conventional wisdom holds that disclosing influencer sponsorship diminishes advertising's effectiveness by triggering consumer skepticism. Responding to this perceived transparency gap, regulators have adopted mandatory disclosure regimes to address a perceived market failure: the divergence between private commercial incentives and the public interest in transparency. This Article challenges that assumption. Drawing on a large-scale social media experiment (N=600), it demonstrates that disclosures not only increase consumers' recognition of advertising but also improve their attitudes toward both influencers and brands, while significantly boosting their willingness to share promotional content. These empirical results are further supported by a comprehensive synthesis of the emerging …

Seeing Is Believing? Deepfakes In Financial Markets, Hadar Y. Jabotinsky, Michal Lavi

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

An AI-powered tool recently mimicked Warren Buffett's image and voice so convincingly that even his own family could have been deceived. This striking example highlights the transformative potential of voice cloning and deepfakes. This innovative technology leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to create hyper-realistic audio and video content. By blurring the boundaries between authenticity and synthetic creation, deepfakes make it possible to fabricate moments that never occurred. Recent advancements in AI and user-friendly software have made deepfakes more accessible andfurther contributed to the proliferation of deepfakes, enabling even individuals with minimal technical skills to produce compelling deepfakes at little to no …

From Privacy To The Data Economy: The Ftc’S Reframing Of Its Regulatory Priorities, Maria P. Angel

Scholarly Works

This Article argues that the Federal Trade Commission’s turn to “commercial surveillance” reflects a strategic shift away from traditional privacy frameworks toward addressing structural power dynamics in the data economy. Drawing on an analysis of 112 FTC documents, it identifies three core commitments: tackling systemic harms, adopting a political economy lens, and constraining corporate power. The Article contends that this reframing is both necessary in the AI age and should influence the future of privacy regulation in the United States, even amid efforts to limit the FTC’s authority.

Desperately Seeking Non-Judgmental Supports: Young People’S Perceptions Of Adult Responses To Technology-Facilitated Harms, Alexa Dodge, Kaitlynn Mendes, Christopher Dietzel, Suzie Dunn

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Young people around the world are increasingly impacted by technologyfacilitated harms, yet research shows that teens often do not seek help from adults in their lives to deal with these harms. This article draws data from 25 focus groups with 146 young Canadians (aged 13–18) as they explain why they are reluctant to seek adult help when experiencing technologyfacilitated harms. Young Canadians consistently said that adults speak to them in ways that are judgmental, emotionally reactive, and disempowering. To make them more likely to seek help from adults, young people want adults to avoid scare tactic approaches, listen to their …

Hallucinated Legal Presentations In Civil Trial Courts, Jeffrey Parness

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

Increasingly, hallucinated legal presentations are being discovered and sanctioned in U.S. federal and state civil trial courts. Such presentations encompass papers that are signed, filed, submitted, or advocated, which contain nonexistent legal sources, whether case precedents, statutes, court rules, administrative regulations, or otherwise. These presentations may be discovered by judges, presenting lawyers, opposing lawyers, unrepresented parties, or witnesses.

Data Rights For Workers, Pauline Kim, Rachel Leavitt

Scholarship@WashULaw

Workers are subject to immense amounts of data collection on the job, and the algorithmic management tools built with that data can produce negative effects, including deskilling jobs, unstable work hours, reduced wages, and dangerous and degrading working conditions. Workers thus have significant interests how their data are collected and used, and yet they have been excluded from nearly all the recently enacted or proposed data protection laws. Their exclusion stems from data protection’s roots in privacy law and theory, which primarily focused on consumers as data subjects. Current data protection laws, even if expanded to cover workers, would provide …

Open Source Ai, Open Liability Ai, Bryan H. Choi

Publications

The release of open-source AI foundation models has been advertised as “good for the world.” But free public access comes with significant risks of harm. The tacit assumption has been that the “open source” label carries with it automatic immunity from legal liability. Accordingly, critics and skeptics of open-source AI have focused their attacks primarily on whether open-source AI properly qualifies as “open source.”

But the rule of liability for open-source AI should not depend on openness. This Essay explains that the notion of open-source exceptionalism draws upon a discredited theory of charitable immunity. Conventional tort law principles do not …

Adversarial Certification Of Evidentiary Software, Nicholas G. Vincent, Bryan H. Choi, Eli Siems, Clay Halbert, Katherine J. Strandburg

Publications

No abstract provided.