Artificial Intelligence: Technology and Law (FS26)

AI systems come with great promises and opportunities, but they also raise numerous concerns and pose significant challenges to the application of today’s legal order. Accordingly, regulators around the globe are investigating if and how the law should be adapted to meet these challenges. As a first response, the EU adopted its AI Act in June 2024, which aims to regulate AI as a technology. The Swiss Government decided to take a different approach, focusing on the application and adaptation of existing laws.

This course provides participants with an interdisciplinary view on AI by focusing on the capabilities of AI systems and the regulatory as well as technical responses in Switzerland and the EU. In doing so, it also highlights some of the fundamental differences in preventing undesired outcomes in law and computer science, and challenges all participants to reflect on practical solutions for the future.

Important Information: The number of students for this course is limited. Registration is handled exclusively through the University of Zurich's booking system. The registration period for the course runs from 14 January 2026, 10 am until 27 January 2026, 11:59 pm. Seats are allocated no later than Saturday, 31 January 2026, 10 pm. There is a late booking period from 31 January 2026, 10:01 pm to Thursday, 12 February 2026, 11:59 pm (if any seats remain available). If you have any questions regarding booking modules, please contact the Student Center using the contact form.
 

On Tuesday, 17 February 2026 (2:00 pm–3:45 pm, please visit the UZH course catalogue for room information), Prof. Abraham Bernstein, Ph.D., and Prof. Dr. Florent Thouvenin will give an introduction to the objectives of the course and its schedule. They will also highlight the most relevant opportunities and challenges associated with AI from a legal and a technical perspective.

Each student must submit a summary of his/her personal profile and topics of interest (half-page, incl. contact details) by Monday, 2 March 2026, 11:59 pm at the latest (on OLAT). The profiles will be made available to all participants in a folder via OLAT. On Tuesday, 3 March 2026 (3:00 pm –6:00 pm) students will briefly present themselves (name, fields of study, reason for choosing this course, topics of interest). Presentation should last no longer than two minutes. After the presentations, students will be able to discuss and exchange ideas in small groups and to define topics they want to work on in a group consisting of both computer scientists and lawyers. This should allow all students to form or join a group. All groups must be interdisciplinary and should consist of 3–4 students.

On Friday, 27 March 2026 (all day), the groups will present their ideas for a potential paper/artifact during class (max. 15 minutes per group). All groups will get feedback on their idea from the professors. Based on the presentations, the final assignment of the groups and topics will be announced in class or afterwards.

Each group will work on a cross-disciplinary AI project and write a paper or provide other scientific output (“artifacts”) on a technical and legal AI challenge (e.g., develop a website, wiki, app, interactive analysis, etc.).

Papers must be no longer than 10,000 words. If you provide an artifact, the paper can be much shorter. Please indicate the number of words on the cover sheet of your paper.

The deadline for handing in the papers/artifacts is Friday, 15 May 2026, 11:59 pm (NB: lawyers are very strict about deadlines). The papers must be uploaded on OLAT. Groups that build an artifact should provide a short description of the problem they aimed to solve; describe the solution they provided including, if available, a link to the solution; explain the rationale for the specific solution design chosen; and briefly discuss how they evaluated their solution.

No later than Monday, 18 May 2026, 11:59 pm, each group must upload a summary of their paper/artifact (one page max) on OLAT. The summaries will be made available to all participants on OLAT, and participants are required to read all summaries to be able to participate in the discussion at the workshop. In addition, we will assign one paper/artifact of another group to each group, and request that they comment on the other group’s work as a discussant peer group at the workshop.

The workshop will take place on Friday, 22 May 2026 (all day). Attendance at the workshop is mandatory.

We will announce a tentative schedule for the workshop (please stay flexible timewise).

Each group will have 20 min to present its paper/artifact. The discussant peer group will then have 10 min to raise its comments and questions. These presentations will be followed by 30 min of discussion. Please keep in mind that you must have read all the summaries to be able to participate in the discussion on an informed basis.

Grading will be based, in addition to the paper/artifact, on the group presentation, the presentation of comments and questions when discussing the other group’s work, and participation in the discussion. Please note that we will grade the group as a whole, with no individual grading.

The slides will be provided on OLAT after the respective lectures.