About
The Program on Understanding Law, Science, and Evidence (PULSE) at UCLA School of Law explores the complex, multi-faceted connections between technology, science, and law. PULSE engages in cutting-edge interdisciplinary research and innovative programming to study how technological advances and scientific knowledge and uncertainties influence law and policy making, and how their impacts can be managed to advance human and societal well-being.
The Program on Understanding Law, Science, and Evidence (PULSE)
AI PULSE Papers (18)
Mob.ly App Makes Driving Safer by Changing How Drivers Navigate
A group of multi-disciplinary researchers from across North America today announced the launch of a new app, Mob.ly, that reduces the incidents of road rage by promoting a driver’s sense of well-being and safety without sacrificing efficiency and access.
“Soft Law” Governance of Artificial Intelligence
On November 26, 2017, Elon Musk tweeted: “Got to regulate AI/robotics like we do food, drugs, aircraft & cars. Public risks require public oversight. Getting rid of the FAA wdn’t [sic] make flying safer. They’re there for good reason.”
In this and other recent pronouncements, Musk is calling for artificial intelligence (AI) to be regulated by traditional regulation, just as we regulate foods, drugs, aircraft and cars. Putting aside the quibble that food, drugs, aircraft and cars are each regulated very differently, these calls for regulation seem to envision one or more federal regulatory agencies adopting binding regulations to ensure the safety of AI. Musk is not alone in calling for “regulation” of AI, and some serious AI scholars and policymakers have likewise called for regulation of AI using traditional governmental regulatory approaches .
Could AI Drive Transformative Social Progress? What Would This Require?
The potential societal impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) and related technologiesare so vast, they are often likened to those of past transformative technologicalchanges such as the industrial or agricultural revolutions. They are also deeplyuncertain, presenting a wide range of possibilities for good or ill – as indeed thediverse technologies lumped under the term AI are themselves diffuse, labile, anduncertain. Speculation about AI’s broad social impacts ranges from full-on utopia todystopia, both in fictional and non-fiction accounts. Narrowing the field of view fromaggregate impacts to particular impacts and their mechanisms, there is substantial(but far from total) agreement on some – e.g., profound disruption of labor markets,with the prospect of unemployment that is novel in scale and breadth – but greatuncertainty on others, even as to sign. Will AI concentrate or distribute economicand political power – and if concentrate, then in whom? Will it make human lives andsocieties more diverse or more uniform? Expand or contract individual liberty?Enrich or degrade human capabilities? On all these points, the range of presentspeculation is vast.