OXFORD'S NEW DEGREE

The MSc in Law, Governance and AI was first announced in August, and the pitch is – at its broadest – that the 27-odd places for the one-year, full-time course will be filled by a brilliant cohort of policy makers, recent graduates and pivoting mid-career applicants who want to be leaders in this rapidly emerging space.

Jointly delivered by the Faculty of Law and the Department of Politics and International Relations, the programme is co-directed by Ben Ansell, Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions, and Rebecca Williams, Professor of Public Law and Criminal Law (Worcester, 1994).

In discussing the programme, Ben notes that Oxford is a world leader in AI but that much of the attention hitherto has been on the future shape and meaning of AI, whereas seen from a policy and regulatory perspective ‘the horse has bolted the stable’ and there is now a rapid need for a new generation of leaders to harness the extraordinary potential of AI while seeing off the real dangers.

Meanwhile in the policy sphere, there has been a significant shift in Whitehall in the past two years, with the appointment of Oxonian the Rt Hon Kanishka Narayan MP (Balliol, 2008) as Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence.

That is a significant detail because the degree course, whose first cohort will apply this autumn and come up to Oxford in October 2027, will be as nimble as its subject matter with a lively extramural diet of discussion, speakers and visits across the academic, policy and technology spheres.

Given the Oxford connection, it is tempting to imagine the Minister for AI dropping in for a future fireside chat, just as applicants for the degree may well include senior civil servants with a legal or tech background.

The degree also draws on a truly exceptional external advisory board whose members bring senior experience across law, justice, artificial intelligence, regulation, public policy and professional practice.

The board includes Professor Richard Susskind (Balliol, 1983), an internationally recognised authority on AI, legal services and the future of justice; Shruti Ajitsaria, Head of Fuse at A&O Shearman, with extensive experience connecting legal practice with legaltech and fintech innovation; Connor Griffin, who works in AI policy at Google DeepMind and brings expertise in the relationship between AI engineering, economics and public policy; Sofia Adams-Bhatti, a public policy and AI specialist whose experience includes the United Nations, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Competition and Markets Authority and the Law Society; and Sir Ernest Ryder, Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, whose previous roles include Senior President of Tribunals and a Lord Justice of Appeal.

The University is recruiting two new professors to teach the course, and they will be linked through the Centre for Advanced Social Science Method (CASSM) based at Ben's college, Nuffield.

Ben says: ‘We will not be teaching a senior Anthropic engineer how to chew gum, but we will be teaching computational methods – how AI actually works – and how to think creatively about how to use it effectively to solve legal and governance challenges. Everyone will participate in a capstone project involving computational modelling, interface design skills and web app design, culminating in a Dragon's Den presentation format.’

Rebecca adds that the experience of generative AI so far has not been wholly positive in the area of law (‘LLMs can "hallucinate", making up legal cases...’), yet some of the modelling that can be achieved to test problem sets ‘may unleash real insight and is seen as complementary to senior leaders’.

We move to discussing the tension between state and federal government regulation of AI in the US, and at a further remove the cultural aspects of Large Language Model design and where China weighs in as a rival. The impression given is that the successful applicants for this degree will, through an Oxford prism, be offered a ringside seat at international current affairs because there is scarcely a day goes by without a plot twist on this subject area, spanning technology, politics and of course law.

The legal profession also offers a challenge to the otherwise unfettered technologists.

In our discussion, Rebecca explains how there is ‘tech for law’ and ‘law for tech’. This degree is more interested in ‘law for tech’. The premise here is that while the growth of AI creates major opportunities, it also raises difficult questions about accountability, fairness, public value, legal responsibility and democratic oversight, but it also includes ‘tech for law’, or indeed for governance or application in other spheres, via the capstone project.

Rebecca’s work focuses on the relationship between law and technology, including the use of algorithms in decision-making. She says: ‘The governance of AI cannot be understood through law, technology or politics alone. It requires people who can move between disciplines, ask the right questions about accountability and public value, and work collaboratively on practical problems. This MSc in Law, Governance and AI brings those elements together, giving students the opportunity to understand how AI systems operate, how they are regulated, and how law and governance can respond to technological change.’

Ben, a leading political scientist whose research spans topics including education, housing, inequality and democracy, adds: ‘AI raises fundamental questions about how societies make decisions, how institutions respond to change, and how democratic systems can remain accountable in the face of new technological power. This programme gives students the tools to think seriously about those questions, combining law, politics, governance and technical understanding so they can contribute to the responsible development of AI in public life.’