CLAIR's inaugural roundtable brought together roughly two dozen scholars to workshop legal frameworks for reducing catastrophic and existential risks from advanced AI. The event was built around themed panels with short presentations and substantive Q&A, with a program designed to span core public law questions and the private law and institutional design issues that show up the moment you ask "who is responsible, and under what rules."
Program Themes
- Foundations of AI safety and adjacent domains like biosecurity
- Liability and private law as governance tools
- Alignment, technical governance, and the translation problem between engineers and law
- Litigation, courts, and institutional competence
- Existential risk and governance under deep uncertainty
- Algorithmic justice, delegation, and definitions
- Rights and protections in AI systems
- International and comparative approaches to AI governance
Tentative Program
Inaugural Roundtable on AI Safety Law
University of Alabama Law School
April 25–26, 2025
Thursday, April 24
- 7:30 pm: Informal drinks at 'Loosa Brews
Friday, April 25 — Hayes Conference Room, Law School, Room 344
- 9:00 – 9:30: Breakfast
- 9:30 – 9:40: Introductions: Vice Dean Joel Nichols
- 9:40 – 10:30: Panel 1: Foundations of AI Safety and Biosecurity
- Doni Bloomfield: Dual-Use Innovation Policy
- Mirit Eyal & Yonathan Arbel: Tax Levers For A Safer AI Future
- 10:30 – 10:40: Break
- 10:40 – 12:20: Panel 2: Liability Frameworks in AI Governance
- Gabe Weil: Instrument Choice In AI Governance: Liability As The Indispensable Complement
- Trent Kannegieter: Stochastic AI Systems: Stochasticity's Implications For Product Liability
- Lauren Scholz: Private Law And AI Risk
- Commentator: Daniel Schwarcz
- 12:20 – 1:20: Lunch
- 12:25 – 12:55: What is AI Safety, panel discussion: Kevin Frazier, Peter Salib, and Yonathan Arbel
- 1:20 – 2:00: Panel 3: AI Alignment and Technical Governance
- Jack Boeglin: Aligning Artificial Intelligence to The Law
- Nicholas Caputo: Alignment As Jurisprudence
- 2:00 – 2:30: Outside coffee
- 2:30 – 3:30: Panel 4: Litigation and Judicial Approaches to AI
- Noam Kolt: Governing AI Agents
- Daniel Wilf-Townsend: Artificial Intelligence And Aggregate Litigation
- David Rubenstein: Policy Formation In American Federalism
- 3:30 – 3:40: Break
- 3:40 – 4:40: Panel 5: AI Safety and Existential Risk
- John Bliss: Against Extinction: Inside the Global Movement for Safe Artificial Intelligence
- Jonathan Barlow: The Virtue Of Intelligence: Reframing Existential AI Risk Through Virtue Epistemology
- Henry A Thompson: AI And The Law
- 6:30: Conference Dinner (On premise)
Saturday, April 26 — Hayes Conference Room, Law School, Room 344
- 8:00: Training run: A walk (and run) on the Tuscaloosa River Walk
- 9:00 – 9:30: Breakfast available at the Law School
- 9:30 – 10:30: Panel 6: Algorithmic Justice and Delegation
- Andrew Keane Woods: Deference And Delegation To Algorithms
- Benjamin Sundholm: The Tort Law We Need
- Paul Weitzel: Defining Artificial Intelligence
- 10:30 – 10:40: Break
- 10:40 – 12:00: Panel 7: Rights and Protections in AI Systems
- Peter Salib: AI Rights for Human Safety
- Frank Fagan: AI Rights And Safe AI
- Rodrigo Belle Gubbins: From Human-to-Machine Interactions to Human-to-"Human" Interactions: A New Dynamic?
- Gad Weiss: Aligned Structuring Of AI Startups
- 12:00 – 12:45: Lunch
- 12:45 – 1:45: Panel 8: International and Comparative AI Governance
- Carolina Barcelos Bontempo: The Civil Liability Of Artificial Intelligence From A Brazilian Law Perspective
- Tracy Pearl: Governance In The Absence Of Government
- Karni Chagal: This Is Not A Game: The Addictive Allure of Digital Companions