With the fall semester now upon us (I begin teaching today! — but I cannot comprehend why college courses in the southeast have to begin in hot and humid August; does it have anything to do with college football?), I am posting the first half of my new A.I.-themed syllabus under the fold below:

CLASS #1: INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE

CLASS #2: CAN THE GOVERNMENT BAN TIKTOK? A.I.?

Required readings:

• Article in The Conversation (updated May 18, 2023), available here.
• Law Review Article by James G. Hodge Jr. & Megan Scanlon: The Legal Anatomy of Product Bans to Protect the Public’s Health, Annals of Health Law, Vol. 23, no. 2 (2014), pp. 23-41, available here.
• Ency. Britannica: Police power (American law), available here.

Recommended:

• Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter, available here.
• ‘AI Pause’ Open Letter Stokes Fear and Controversy, available here.

CLASS #3: WHO OWNS A.I.-GENERATED CREATIONS AND WORKS?

Required readings:

• Article in Forbes (Dec. 21, 2022): https://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2022/12/21/who-ultimately-owns-content-generated-by-chatgpt-and-other-ai-platforms/?sh=38ade7045423
• Thaler v. Perlmutter, decided last Friday! (August 18, 2023); excerpts are available here: https://reason.com/volokh/2023/08/21/no-copyright-for-certain-ai-generated-works-but-maybe-yes-for-others-if-prompts-are-detailed-enough/
• Pierson v. Post
• International News Service v. Associated Press

CLASS #4: IS “GPT-5” GENERIC, DESCRIPTIVE, SUGGESTIVE, OR ARBITRARY?

Required readings:

• Four reasons to register a mark: https://www.gerbenlaw.com/blog/am-i-required-by-law-to-register-my-trademark/
• How to register a trademark: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/how-to-trademark-your-businesss-name/
• OpenAI’s Files a Trademark Application for GPT-5: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/openai-files-trademark-application-gpt-5/493040/#close

CLASS #5: IS CHATGPT THE NEXT NAPSTER?

Required readings:

• Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement: https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/9/23788741/sarah-silverman-openai-meta-chatgpt-llama-copyright-infringement-chatbots-artificial-intelligence-ai
• DMCA Takedown Notice: https://library.georgetown.edu/copyright/dmca-takedown
• Fair Use: https://copyright.columbia.edu/basics/fair-use.html
• Wikipedia, DMCA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

Recommended:

• Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 555 U.S. 7 (2008), available here.
• A Short History of Napster: https://www.lifewire.com/history-of-napster-2438592
• Wikipedia, Napster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster

CLASS #6: ADDITIONAL THEORIES OF LEGAL LIABILITY FOR A.I.-GENERATED HARMS [COMMON LAW /TORTS]

Required reading:

• Rockow v. Hendry (negligence versus strict liability)
• Defamation, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation
• Florida Statutes, Chapter 836 (2023), available here.
• Laurel Witt, Preventing the Rogue Bot Journalist: Protection from Non-human Defamation (2016), available here.

Recommended:

Economic Analysis of Alternative Standards of Liability, available here.

• Peter Henderson, et al., Where’s the Liability in Harmful AI Speech?, available here.

CLASS #7: LAWFUL VERSUS UNLAWFUL HARMS: RETHINKING THE CONCEPT OF HARM IN BUSINESS LAW AND ETHICS [JURISPRUDENCE]

Required readings:

• Harm principle, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_principle
• R. A. Duff, Harms and Wrongs, Buffalo Criminal Law Review, Vol. 5, No. 1 (April 2001), pp. 13-45, available here.
• Ben Bradley, Doing Away With Harm (2012), available here.
• Sturges v. Bridgman
• R. H. Coase, The Federal Communications Commission (1959), especially pp. 25-26.
• _________, The Problem of Social Cost (1960), especially pp. 1-2.

Recommended:

• Eithne Dowds, Consent, Autonomy and Coercion: A Response to Robin West: https://www.modernlawreview.co.uk/dowds-west/.
• Marianne Giles, R v Brown: Consensual Harm and the Public Interest, The Modern Law Review, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Jan., 1994), pp. 101-111.
• Ben Saunders, Reformulating Mill’s Harm Principle, Mind, Vol. 125 (Oct., 2016), pp. 1005-1042.

I will post the second half of my new syllabus at a later date. In the meantime, suggestions and feedback are welcome!