Speaker Series: Maura Grossman, Professor, University of Waterloo

"Fundamentals of AI and Issues of Bias - What Every Law Student Should Know"

Summary

Today, data-driven decision-making is used in everything from credit to education to housing to employment to policing and beyond.

This 90-minute session will cover what AI is, how it works, different ways AI is being used today in the legal profession, and some of the challenges with AI, focusing, in particular, on the issue of bias.

Maura will address whether data-driven decisions are objective and fair or whether they simply perpetuate bias and the status quo. Using the example of risk-based assessment tools applied in the criminal justice system, she will explore how to balance the competing considerations of the need for broad, representative data sets with the need to protect individual privacy, and what technologists, lawyers, and regulators can and should be doing to meet the challenges and opportunities inherent in data-driven decision-making.