AI, data and private law: The theory-practice interface

• Main Authors: CHAN, Gary Kok Yew, YIP, Man
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: Private Law; Artificial Intelligence; Data Governance; Asian Studies; Science and Technology Law
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sol_research/3436; https://search.library.smu.edu.sg/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma99481301102601&context=L&vid=65SMU_INST:SMU_NUI&lang=en&search_scope=Everything&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,AI,%20Data%20and%20Private%20Law:%20Translating%20Theory%20into%20Practice&offset=0
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The growing importance of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data in modern society, and the potential for their misuse as a tool for irresponsible profit call for a constructive conversation on how the law should direct the development and use of technology. This collection of chapters, drawn from the Conference on ‘AI and Commercial Law: Reimagining Trust, Governance, and Private Law Rules’, examines the interconnected themes of AI, data protection and governance, and the disruption to or innovation in private law principles. This collection makes two contributions. First, it shows that private law is a crucial sphere within which that conversation takes place. To borrow from the extra-judicial comments of Justice Cuéllar of the Supreme Court of California, private law ‘provides a kind of first-draft regulatory framework – however imperfect – for managing new technologies ranging from aviation to email’. As this collection demonstrates, private law furnishes a first-draft regulatory framework by directly applying or gently extending existing private law theory, concepts and doctrines to new technological phenomena and, more markedly at times, by creating new principles or inspiring a new regulatory concept. This is not to say that private law is superior to or replaces legislation. This collection asks that we consider more deeply the potential and limits of private law regulation of AI and data use, as well as its co-existence and interface with legislations.