2024 Nies Lecture on Intellectual Property [Video]

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

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.