General provisions

Determined on December 10, 2021 by Faculty of Law's Teaching Committee, Uppsala University, by virtue of Chapter 6 Section 14 and 15 (1993:100) of the Higher Education Ordinance. The course plan enters into force on August 1, 2022.

General

The course is 15 university points (15 ECTS credits) and a single subject course at advanced level. The course is held in English.

Entry requirements

At least 120 credits of which at least 15 credits in law.

Learning outcomes

After the course, students should be able to:

• Identify and investigate advanced legal issues that emerge at the interface of Law and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
• Have a basic understanding of how different AI models function and how this can be relevant from a legal perspective.
• Independently find and analyze relevant legal source material relating to Law & AI. The main focus is on theoretical frameworks and EU law, but in some parts of the course other international and national legal sources will also be relevant.
• Understand the difference between regulation of AI by law and by ethical guidelines.
• Apply relevant law, notably EU law, in the area Law & AI.
• Analyze the regulation of AI applying relevant theoretical frameworks and literature.
• Evaluate the use of AI as a regulatory tool applying relevant theoretical frameworks and literature.
• Present solutions, orally and in writing, to complex legal issues related to Law & AI.
• Evaluate policy and new legislative developments related to AI. 

Criteria for grades

The course is graded with the grades "fail" (U), "approved" (G) or "approved with merit" (VG).

For the grade "approved" (G) the student shall show to have achieved all the learning outcomes, showing an ability to present and refer to relevant material in a descriptive, summarizing, reflective and analytic way.

For the higher grade "approved with merit" (VG) the student shall, in addition to fulfilling the requirements for the grade "approved" (G), show an ability to structure relevant material well, to analyze and evaluate it critically, to reason independently, and to use these abilities to argue convincingly with a certain degree of originality and independence.

Content

Within the last decade the technological advances and societal uptake of AI has been enormous. Currently AI is getting a foothold in almost any aspect of life. AI software (personalized recommender systems, automated risk assessment systems, image analytics, etc.) has become ubiquitous and is increasingly embedded within smart objects such as voice assistants, smart cameras, drones and self-driving cars. AI is both used to classify ("social sorting") as well as to create (such as "deepfakes"). AI is not just the object of regulation but is also increasingly used as a tool for regulation and enforcement. This course gives an introduction to some salient legal debates surrounding the uptake of AI within society.

Four important themes in the course are:

1. The basics of AI. What is AI? How can society be regulated and organized by means of information technology (IT) and AI? How do AI applications affect a variety of legal domains (constitutional law, data protection, intellectual property, torts law, etc.)?
2. Data: the legal status of AI input and output. We discuss the legal status of what goes in and what comes out of AI models: input and output data.
3. New EU instruments and policies regulating AI. This includes the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 and the Copyright Directive 2019/790, as well as legal instruments that are currently still in the making as part of the digital strategy of the EU: the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, the Data Governance Act and the Data Act.
4. AI in practice. We discuss several practical examples of how AI is used and the legal issues that it raises.

The course aims to deepen the understanding of the relationship between Law & AI as regards both practical and theoretical legal problems. The main focus of the course is on EU law but when relevant also other international and national legal instruments are discussed.

Instruction

The teaching consists of seminars, lectures and student presentations.

The lectures are intended to provide context and interpretation of the reading material and the main issues that the course deals with.

All seminars and collaborative preparation in base groups (see below) are obligatory and active participation in the seminars is an obligatory requirement to successfully pass the exam. During seminars students are required to actively participate in discussions, answer questions, present written assignments and discuss the contributions of other students in a respectful manner. If special reasons exist, the course director may exempt a student from attending particular seminars, and may require appropriate replacement tasks to be performed.

Students prepare for the seminars both individually and in a "basgrupp" (base group) of 4-5 students. The required preparation for the seminars consists of the literature for the course as a whole, and whatever special reading instructions are given for each seminar. During some of the seminars students will be required to present a short written assignment or give a short commentary on the assignment of another student.

Assessment

The grades given are Fail (U), and the passing grades "approved" (G) or "approved with merit" (VG).

The final grade is based on 4 aspects ("examination portfolio"):

1. Class attendance and active participation.
2. Written assignments (each assignment has a length of 3-4 pages). The students will present these assignments orally during class and receive comments from another student that has been designated as an opponent.
3. Commentaries (written and oral; written commentaries have a length of 1-2 pages) on written assignments from other students.
4. A written paper (10-20 pages) on a topic relevant for the course.

The final grade obtained for the course is based on a balanced assessment of the examination portfolio, where 1-3 (attendance, participation, short written assignments and commentaries presented orally during the seminar) contribute 45% to the final grade and 4 (a written paper of 10-20 pages) contributes 55%.

A student whose final written paper has been given a Fail (U) will be given one opportunity to submit a retake.

If there are special reasons for doing so, an examiner may make an exception from the method of assessment indicated and allow a student to be assessed by another method. An example of special reasons might be a certificate regarding recommendations of special pedagogical support from the disability coordinator of the university.

Deception on the part of a student in the examination or in graded course work is prohibited. It is, for example, cheating to submit an essay containing another person's unattributed work. Where deception in this, or another way, is suspected, this will be reported to the University Discipline Board which can decide on an official warning or a period of up to six months suspension of studies.

Other regulations

It is delegated to the course director to issue the study plan and the literature list. These shall be annually submitted to the Teaching Committee as part of the course report.