Generative AI in Policy

Catalog description

This course examines artificial intelligence from a comprehensive, interdisciplinary perspective, focusing on its transformative potential for society alongside its significant risks and costs. Students will explore what AI is, how it currently functions, and how it may evolve, while critically evaluating its benefits in areas such as efficiency, innovation, and public problem-solving against risks including rogue or harmful systems, intellectual property theft, workforce displacement, bias, surveillance, and large-scale misinformation. A central "big picture" question anchors the course: are the benefits of AI worth the risks and costs, and under what conditions? The course places particular emphasis on the role of the U.S. legal system in addressing and mitigating these risks through regulation, liability frameworks, constitutional and administrative law, and emerging governance models. Finally, students will analyze how AI can be safely, ethically, and effectively deployed in government, from policy design and regulatory enforcement to public service delivery and program implementation, while balancing innovation, accountability, and the public interest.