DESCRIPTION
7th Annual BTLJ-BCLT Fall Race & Technology Symposium: Being Human in the Age of AI
Panel 4: Person, Product, Tool, or Speaker? AI's Contested Legal Status
Program Information | Agenda | Resources | Speaker Bio(s) & Contact Info
Panel Description:
While AI companies fund research into whether their own models might have morally relevant experiences, more than a dozen states have moved to declare by statute that AI cannot be conscious. This panel asks whether the law actually needs to resolve what AI fundamentally is — product, speaker, agent, or person — or whether courts are already deciding "who pays" case by case. Panelists bring perspectives from products-liability scholarship, First Amendment law, and in-house AI governance.
Speakers
Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, UC Berkeley Law
Catherine M. Sharkey, NYU Law
Janel Thamkul, Institute for Law & AI (LawAI), formerly Anthropic
Moderator
Pamela Samuelson, BCLT, UC Berkeley Law
Symposium Description:
Being Human in the Age of AI, a symposium exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping the law’s most basic assumptions about the human person — from the privacy of the mind to the boundaries of legal responsibility. Across four panels, we traced an arc from the innermost self outward: how neurotechnology and algorithmic design test the limits of cognitive liberty; how deepfakes and biometric systems unsettle the law of identity; how automated decision-making challenges due process and the right to be heard; and how courts and legislatures are struggling to define what AI fundamentally is. Attendees heard from leading scholars, technologists, and practitioners grappling with these questions in real time, as courts issue rulings, states pass conflicting statutes, and AI companies themselves debate the moral status of the systems they build.