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Resist AI (LAW-DS-RESAI-26)

LAW-DS-RESAI-26

Description

Do you feel overwhelmed by the irruption of AI? Do you see universities and academics surrendering to a techno-dystopian world where large language models monopolize scholarship? What is the alternative to joining the craze? On what bases can we reject the idea that responsible use of AI is the only path forward? How not to capitulate?

This seminar will not examine the growing literature showing the serious problems AI inflicts on its users: cognitive offloading, cognitive debt, cognitive insecurity. We will not explore the monstrous environmental footprint of AI. We will not study the socioeconomic impact of labor displacement. We will not challenge the extractivist nature of AI. We will not study the psychological trauma suffered by workers in the Global South, who screen violent and illicit content to train and filter AI platforms. We will not interrogate the ideologies at work in the repackaging of technologies under the AI brand. And we will not ask about the morality of AI.

All these are very important problems to explore. However, this seminar has a different purpose: we will help each other to resist AI.

We will train the skills necessary to reject AI in academic work. Reaffirming the humanist vocation of legal scholarship, we will exercise three skills: reading, thinking and writing.

This is a 6 credits 10 sessions seminar. At the Law Department we read, we think, and we write, and when we write we think and read again. Therefore, this seminar will have one substantive session on reading and one on thinking. Then, the three remaining substantive sessions will be devoted to writing. In between substantive sessions will have four reading sessions. In these sessions we will read in silence. Attendance is optional.

In each substantive session we will read a book that examines one of the three skills. In the sessions on reading and thinking, we will also use legal scholarship to explore and illustrate the respective skill. In each of these sessions, you must submit one handwritten page where you share reflections on how the skill discussed plays out in your research.

We will divide the seminar in 3 groups. In each of the substantive sessions on writing, members of each group will submit a short section of their own writing. The submitted document must be a section that you have revised after considering ideas and concepts examined in the respective reading on writing. You will submit a handwritten page where you explain how you revised your draft.


First, Second & Third Term: registration from 21 to 25 September 2026.

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