Generative AI & the Law - C3PO or Robocop with a Law Degree?

This event is co-hosted by the HKU Law and Technology Centre and the HKU Law Association.

Rapid developments in the capabilities of generative AI models raise questions about how these technologies will affect the law and legal practice. This lecture will provide a simplified summary of how generative AI models work, as well as a discussion about their strengths and weaknesses. It will then explore their implications for legal practice, including an assessment as to whether we should expect a future of fully automated robot lawyers or humans with an increasingly technologically mediated practice.

Ryan Whalen‘’s research takes a data-driven approach to understanding the law and legal systems, with a particular focus on intellectual property law and innovation policy. This approach unites traditional doctrinal analyses with empirical techniques drawn from diverse fields including machine learning, natural language processing, network analysis, and data science. His work has appeared in a wide variety of journals including the University of Chicago Law Review, Research Policy, Science & Public Policy, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Yale Law Journal Forum, the Michigan State Law Review, and the Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society.

Chair: Professor Hualing Fu, Dean and Warren Chan Professor in Human Rights and Responsibilities, Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong