2024 Nies Lecture on Intellectual Property

Generative AI Is Doomed

Presented by Eric Goldman, Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Research, and Director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University

Tuesday, April 16, 2024 | 5 p.m. | Eckstein Hall | 1 CLE

This talk will compare today’s proliferation of generative AI with the internet’s commercialization in the mid-1990s. In each case, it was clear that the technology would have revolutionary but uncertain impacts on society. Yet the public sentiments toward the innovations have differed radically. The internet arrived during a period of widespread techno-optimism, creating a regulatory environment that fostered the internet’s growth. Generative AI, in contrast, has arrived during widespread techno-pessimism and following decades of conditioning about the dangers of “AI.” The difference is consequential: The prevailing regulatory and legal responses to generative AI will limit or even negate its benefits. If society hopes to achieve the full potential of generative AI, we’ll need quickly to adopt a new regulatory approach.

Eric Goldman is professor of law, associate dean for research, and co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University’s School of Law. He received his degrees from UCLA: a B.A., summa cum laude, in 1988 and a J.D. and M.B.A. in 1994. He practiced law for eight years in Silicon Valley, first as an internet and technology transactions attorney at Cooley Godward LLP and then as general counsel of Epinions, Inc. From 2002 to 2006, before joining Santa Clara, Goldman served as assistant professor of law at Marquette University.

This annual lecture remembers the Honorable Helen Wilson Nies, who served as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit from 1982 until 1996 (chief judge 1990 –1994).