Innovation Policy Colloquium: Mark McKenna and Woodrow Hartzog

The Innovation Policy Colloquium focuses each year on different aspects of the law’s role in promoting creativity, invention, and new technology. This year, we will discuss the the implications of complexity for law and policy related to innovation, privacy and AI. Complexity science is a cutting-edge multi-disciplinary field that studies a wide variety of systems comprised of numerous interacting components. The human social network, the internet, social media applications, cities, biological systems and financial networks are all examples of complex systems. Complexity can lead to non-linear and surprising responses to policy initiatives, such as tipping points and feedback effects. Policymaking that is insensitive to these possibilities can go drastically awry.

Mark McKenna, Vice Dean of Faculty & Intellectual Life; Professor of Law; Faculty Co-Director, UCLA Institute for Technology, Law & Policy, UCLA School of Law
Woodrow Hartzog, Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law
Taking Scale Seriously in Technology Law

Abstract: Issues of scale—the relationship between the amount of an activity and its associated costs and benefits—permeate discussions around law and technologies. Indeed, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that scale is the reason for most technology regulation. But it’s not always clear how lawmakers and judges conceptualize “scale” when approaching questions around automated technologies. Scale is often used intuitively, just to mean “more.” But scale is not always just about more—scale can introduce new harms and benefits along different dimensions, not simply costs or efficiencies of greater magnitude. In this Article, we argue for a more sustained interrogation of the role of scale in law, one that is more sensitive to the distinction between what we describe as “scale is more” and “scale is different.” When lawmakers and judges fail to properly categorize the role of scale in a particular context, they risk ignoring or misidentifying harms, misdiagnosing the causes of those harms, and potentially focusing on the wrong policy tools, and even the wrong actors, in proposing solutions.

Email Nicole Arzt if you would like to attend the colloquium. If you are outside of NYU and do not have an NYU Id then I will need to add your JRNY for building access.