From AI to Cryptocurrency: How Attorneys Influence Our Tech Future

As technology continues to impact our personal and professional lives in new and often exciting ways, the law plays a vital role in ensuring a proper balance between advancement and societal protection.  As litigators, advocates, and even possibly legislators, law students are preparing to be in a position to help define the role technology plays in our society.  Franklin Pierce School of Law Professor Daniel Pi joins host Manny Fernandez to discuss the intersection of law and technology and how law students can be ready to play their part in influencing our tech future.

• (00:00) - Opening
• (01:27) - Introduction of Topic and Guest
• (04:28) - The Role of Lawyers In Regulating Tech
• (06:29) - The Law as Creator of Incentives for Tech Innovation
• (07:58) - The Historical Influence of Lawyers Over Tech Innovation
• (10:49) - Finding the Balance Between Innovation and the Greater Good
• (12:45) - The Modern Challenges Of Keeping Pace with Tech
• (14:44) - Cryptocurrency Today Compared to the Internet of the Early 90s
• (16:24) - Autonomous Vehicles: Innovation vs Public Safety
• (21:01) - How Law Students can Prepare to Engage in the Law and Technology Intersection
• (24:36) - Reflections and Takeaways by the Hosts

Creators & Guests

Host

Chay Rodriguez

Host

Enmanuel Fernandez

TB

Host

Todd Berger

DP

Guest

Daniel Pi

What is ABA Law Student Podcast?

Presented by the American Bar Association’s Law Student Division, the ABA Law Student Podcast covers issues that affect law students, law schools, and recent grads. From finals and graduation to the bar exam and finding a job, this show is your trusted resource for the next big step.

Todd Berger (00:00):
We all feel the influence and impacts of technology's forward progress every day, both in our personal and professional lives, smarter tools, better communication, or sometimes just the amazing and usually it's a good thing, but it doesn't come without its problems. The near impossibility of disconnecting power concentrated in the hands of a few rapid changes to industries that cost jobs as litigators, advocates, and even possibly legislators. We're in a position to help define the role technology plays in our society. Today we're going to discuss the intersection of law and technology and how you can be ready to play your part in influencing our tech future. This is the A Law Student podcast. Hey, Manny. Hey Shay. Hey Todd.

Chay Rodriguez (01:04):
Hey Todd.

Manny Fernandez (01:05):
How are you doing? Both of you Surviving finals, just barely, but getting there.

Chay Rodriguez (01:11):
I just finished turning in my last final paper for the semester, so I'm doing a lot better than I was yesterday.

Todd Berger (01:18):
A little bit better than Manny, but there's light at the end of the tunnel. So with everything you got going on, thanks for taking some time and joining us today. So who are we going to hear from today and what interested you about the topic that we are going to end up hearing about?

Manny Fernandez (01:35):
So this should be a pretty juicy one. This interview is with Professor Daniel Pi. He is a professor at my law school. My school kind of prides itself in its intellectual property program and Professor Pi is somebody who's had kind of an extensive background in academia. He has a couple of PhDs in economics and he's written extensively about the intersection between tech and innovation and the law. And so obviously I was interested in this topic because my school is an IP school, so these kinds of conversations are always kind of floating around in the hallway here. But also, I mean, we are living almost seems like at an inflection point when it comes to tech and the law. It seems like tech is outpacing the law almost now more than ever. There's so many conversations about generative AI and CRISPR technology and new advances in biomedicine and in automation and in so many fields. And so it seems like tech is on the up and up as it has been for the past few decades. And so the question is always there, which is what should the law do about it? And so to me it's something super important to know. And also I think for a lot of our listeners, this might be pretty eyeopening. We get to talk a little bit about the different aspects of the law that people can get into. And so I think this is going to be a really useful and also a really fun conversation.

Chay Rodriguez (03:10):
I love that we're jumping into this. Of course, we get to pre-list. So as I was pre-listing to the episode, I thought about my two L year in my Crim Pro class and one of the cases, which mind you, this was like two years ago, so one of the cases was talking about your right to privacy and do you have privacy in a payphone? And I remember when we were looking through the case, we were flipping back and forth between the page. We were like, oh, we must have the wrong book because we're talking about payphones tech has gone so far, I don't even know where a payphone is anymore. And one of my classmates, I remember, he said, are you serious? Are we really doing this? He asked the professor, are we really doing this? How is this even remotely relevant? We don't even have payphones. And we had a brief detour and talked about how the law sometimes fit. Well in this case definitely fails to keep up with some of the current things that are going on, and we wonder as different generations step into the classroom, how are they impacted when it's like, oh, we're reading a case about payphones and we have to stop and explain what a payphone is to them super quick before we can keep going. So I'm really excited to get into this.

Todd Berger (04:22):
Terrific. So let's hear from Professor Pi and Manny.

Manny Fernandez (04:28):
Professor Pi, thank you so much for joining me today. So a lot of our listeners are law students and they might be well-served to understand the kind of power that lawyers truly hold in influencing policy and influencing the future of tech development and scientific novelty. So you have your finger on the pulse of this. I did read one of your papers that you very interestingly titled Robot Torts, which I thought was pretty cool. So I know you have some expertise on this. I was wondering if, first of all, I guess if you agree with the premise that lawyers kind of serve as gatekeepers in the modern world, or at least historically?

Daniel Pi (05:14):
Yeah, it depends on what you mean by gatekeepers. I mean a lot of what technological development is is a response to incentives and the law is pretty powerful creator of incentives. And so both by law making and how we decide cases and how we litigate cases, we have an opportunity in the law to affect the development of the speed and also the direction of technological advancement. The word gatekeeper to me seems a little bit like you're keeping people out, and so there is this sort of implication that we may slow or stop development in certain areas. Now certainly that seems to be the case that we do sometimes think about doing that. For example, we want to maybe slow or control the pace of development of nuclear weapons, and more recently there's a lot of talk about legislation or some sort of legal action to control the development of generative ai because there's the thought that if this gets out of hand, then it could be really dangerous.

(06:12):
I happen not to agree with that, but there is a lot of discussion about the latent dangers that AI may present, and the thought is that maybe some sort of legal action would be advisable to stem the dangers that are associated with that. In terms of your characterization as lawyers being gatekeepers, I think a lot of times people have the idea that we ought to be, but I am skeptical about how effective we are at that and in general, I don't think historically we've had that role. I think the better way of thinking about it is that we control the incentives and create the incentives for technological advancement.

Manny Fernandez (06:46):
That is a very interesting take. I'm glad that you mentioned the historical role of lawyers, and I do hope that in our conversation we'll get to talk a little bit about generative AI at least and blockchain technology and stuff like that. But I was hoping maybe we could talk a little bit about the historical role I guess that lawyers have played in this context. I know that a lot of the way that our world is shaped today has a lot to do with powerful litigators and has a lot to do with the important ideas that have been played out in court. One such is our financial institutions and the precepts that we have of our financial institutions all sort of stem from the importing cases that have been litigated in the Supreme Court and otherwise. Can you tell me a little bit about what role lawyers play it in kind of shaping this administrative state today and a lot of the world that we live in within the confines of the

Daniel Pi (07:46):
Administrative state, oftentimes when we think about the relationship between law and innovation and technology, the thought is that a copyright law and patent law and those sorts of things are creating incentives. The administrative state and developments and constitutional law in the 20th century I think tend to have more of a breaking tendency that if copyright and patents are the accelerator, then I think a lot of times the regulatory state puts the brakes on development. And in the abstract, that might sound like a bad thing because generally most people will just think technology is good and that technology makes the world better, makes people's lives better. And there is also, I think in the spirit of American innovation, this idea of running fast and breaking things and that that's a good thing that we try things out and we make mistakes and maybe people get hurt a little bit, but it's worth it that some people get a little bit hurt if the net payoff for society is positive and we can contrast the way we do technology to say Europe.

(08:50):
I mean Europe does not have big tech compared to the United States, almost all of the big tech and technological innovations coming from the United States, and it's because that we allow people to run fast and break things, and Europe is heavily regulatory. Nevertheless, it's not like we don't have federal level regulations. And that really gets started in, as you say, the progressive era and it really ramps up your after FDR where you have the sort of alphabet soup of agencies that try to regulate things, but you might think that's a bad thing, but it's not. I think there's a question of finding a balance. This is always the question in law is how much freedom do you want to allow and how much regulation, I mean in the abstract, if you abstract out all the variables, in a perfect world, the libertarian idea that markets tend towards efficiency is true.

(09:40):
It's an economic theorem that without market failures, allowing everybody just to do their own thing and to pursue their own goals will result in what is socially efficient, what is the optimum welfare. The problem of course, with that premise is that it's just not true that there aren't market failures. There's market failures all over the place, and so you need regulations. And so the question is, is the price we pay for regulation more costly than the benefits of that regulation? And in certain examples, if you think about environmental regulations, I mean of course environmental regulations slow down development, you can't build as much. You have to be more careful when you introduce new technologies onto the market. You can't produce as much of it because of course you have to build all these factories that pollute. And so any environmental regulation is going to have the effect of slowing down the progress of technology. That doesn't necessarily mean that we shouldn't have environmental regulations obviously. So you have to figure out what the balance of that is. But I think that the development of the administrative state is essentially the development of a regulatory state state, and that means that it's more difficult for businesses to try new things and to run fast and break things.

Manny Fernandez (10:48):
I think a great example of this is probably monopolistic behavior, right? Because we want to incentivize innovation in the likes of the Googles of the world and the open ais and these other companies that have shown immense promise for coming up with new, brilliant ideas. But we also want to mitigate monopolies, right? Because it's not the best for competition. And so I guess the point of that is that as lawyers, we're constantly trying to find the balancing act between innovation but also the greater good and individual rights and whatnot. I guess that's where our constitutional framework plays into it, right? Yeah. It's interesting to see the administrative state as this regulatory state as kind of what the part of our government that pumps the brakes when the breaks need to be pumped. But I guess from what I'm taking from what you're saying here is that in America, we are less heavy on the brakes and more heavy on the gas, right?

Daniel Pi (11:52):
Yeah. That has tended to be historically our tradition,

Manny Fernandez (11:54):
Which now I understand why you're more so hesitant to call lawyers gatekeepers, right? They're not so much gatekeepers. They're facilitating incentive structures more So

Daniel Pi (12:05):
Yeah, I think that's the right way of looking at it. I mean, there are other people who see intellectual property and regulation in different terms. I mean, there are some people who try to characterize these things in moral terms rather than trying to see it as creating efficient incentives. I personally don't think that that perspective is particularly valuable when you start to get into questions of what is moral or immoral. I mean, suddenly you're just asking, you're polling people for their subjective opinions about what they like or don't like, and there just isn't. You might as well try to regulate what is the best flavor of ice cream. I mean, everybody has their own preferences. I mean, it's not a helpful way of looking at the law, I think, but there are reasonable opinions that differ from mine.

Manny Fernandez (12:43):
Sure, sure. Okay. With that, I guess we can talk a little bit about the modern challenges that we're facing as technology kind of outpaces the law in many ways. First of all, I guess would you agree with that premise? Would you say that our tech development is moving so fast that the law is struggling to pump the brakes to continue to use your analogy?

Daniel Pi (13:06):
Yeah, I think we're struggling to know whether to pump the brakes. I mean, if we want to, we certainly can. I mean, there's no question that if Congress wants to, they can start passing all sorts of regulation to limit the advancement of generative AI or cryptocurrencies or any of these new technologies or driverless cars. There's a good example. It's where you really think that regulation is necessary, but it's unclear what shape that's going to take.

(13:31):
And so there is the question of whether or not, and then if there is how to make it effective. I mean, you have a lot of implementation problems as well, right? Okay. I mean, you can pass all sorts of legislation to control the development of generative ai, and then you can probably control what Google and open AI are doing. But I can run a generative AI bot on my home computer. I mean to say I'm not at this very moment, and if I do, how is the federal government going to check what I'm doing, what I'm up to if I want to create a generative AI bot that runs around and creates all sorts of mayhem? Well, there's nothing you could do. You can't even distinguish that it's me or the bot that's doing it when it goes online. And also cryptocurrencies, which by their very nature are designed to be decentralized, and you can try to regulate the inputs and outputs, how you get money into cryptocurrency, to convert dollars into cryptocurrencies, but if you have cryptocurrencies like privacy coins, which are specifically intended to defy central regulation, you're going to have a hard time doing it. But it's certainly constitutionally within the power of the government to try to regulate those things. But I think right now the debate is whether we should and how would it even be effective?

Manny Fernandez (14:44):
It hearkens back to the time of the nascent internet where we could have taken a very different approach and heavily regulated internet use, and instead we chose not to pump the brakes. We chose to pump the gas or not regulate, and the internet has kind of become its own kind of beast. And so we're, I feel almost like we're kind of at a similar sort of crossroads now with ai. I

Daniel Pi (15:15):
Think one important distinction though, yeah, I agree with you. This does feel like with generative ai, with autonomous technologies, with cryptocurrency, it does feel a lot like the early nineties with the internet, but I think one critical difference is that the infrastructure for the internet was always something that we knew that we could control. The question of whether or not this is regulatable, whether the regulations could be effective, and we could actually accomplish the incentive goals that we were aiming for. That was not really a controversy in the early nineties. There's no question nobody could go off and develop their own independent internet to compete with the internet, and so you can regulate Comcast or a OL or whoever the service providers are and effectively then control the internet and servers and stuff like that. So it's not exactly the same thing. The question then was really more a question of whether we ought to, and now there's a question of whether we ought to and whether we can and how effective it would be. We'll be right back after this.

Manny Fernandez (16:24):
I want to touch on something that we mentioned a little bit earlier. You mentioned autonomous vehicles, and this is something that comes up a lot when we talk about automation. At what point should public safety be a priority over innovation? At what point do you draw that line? And for people who are listening who are maybe law students who are more, you could say idealistically minded, right? At what point do we know that public safety should trump the steam roller that is oftentimes innovation and tech development?

Daniel Pi (17:00):
I mean, this is the question that I think mean. This is really the question for all legislators all the time. This is the question they always have to be asking themselves is what is the cost of regulation and what is the benefit of regulation? And yeah, you can put all sorts of safety brakes on the development of autonomous vehicles and that will result in slowing the development of autonomous vehicles. I mean, if you put unsafe vehicles on the streets, now they will make money and that money will be funded, will go to funding better software that makes them safer in the future. I think no one doubts that autonomous vehicles in a hundred years are going to be safer than human drivers. In fact, we should not only should autonomous vehicles be permitted, they should be required. You should never let a human behind the wheel.

(17:41):
You should require that always because they're just going to be safer. And there's no doubt about that. I don't think any reasonable person who's looked at the issue, even a little bit doubts that in a hundred years a self-driving car is going to be much safer than a human-driven car. The question is how do we get there? And if right now the autonomous vehicles are more dangerous than human drivers, then what do we do? Do we accept a little bit more danger now so that we can generate the funding so that we can get the safer cars faster? What is the right speed for that sort of thing? It's just a cost benefit question, and you have to estimate what is the speed at which the technology will develop? How safe are the cars now? I mean, if they're super dangerous now, well, even if that means that we're going to get the safer cars faster, we probably shouldn't allow them if it's going to be all sorts of people dying in the streets, but if it's only slightly more dangerous than human drivers, maybe you tolerate that and you say like, okay, well, it's just letting a 16-year-old on the streets.

(18:34):
I mean, we do let 16 year olds drive insanely enough. We do let them drive. Why don't we just treat autonomous vehicles like a 16-year-old driver and say like, okay, they're not going to be the safest drivers, but you need to let them on the street to get experience. And then that's where they're going to get the money. The Teslas and all these companies will get money to develop the self-driving technology that makes them safer, faster, and pretty soon that they're just better drivers than people. Then the question is, should we ever allow humans to drive a car? And I suspect that within our lifetimes, actually, people will think that it's insane that at some point we let human beings with all their flawed decision-making get behind a wheel and move these machines of these hunks of metal that weigh all is tons driving around at 80 miles per hour on these streets, just passing oncoming traffic inches from each other.

Manny Fernandez (19:21):
And I suppose that this logic, logic is also applicable to just all kinds of other examples where we're balancing public safety with innovation like new pharmaceuticals, or even now the advent of gene modification and all of these new developing technologies that balance innovation with, I guess the greater good of society. The logic is the same. It's going to be a cost benefit analysis every time that legislators make decisions or anytime that these issues are discussed ever, I would suppose, right?

Daniel Pi (19:59):
Yeah. I think that that is fundamentally what we're trying to do. I mean, unless you're of the view, which I am not, and I think most people in a liberal democracy are not, unless you're of the view that the purpose of government is to impose your values on other people, the only question is people have the values that they have, and how do you maximize people achieving the things that they want their own values? And that's really the only question that you have to ask is whatever policies we adopt, whatever rules we adopt to govern our society, if they're applied in a fair and equal way, then what is the result? And if we end up in a society where more people's preferences are satisfied than otherwise, then that's a good rule. And if not, it's a bad rule. And that's all we're looking at is what are the costs and benefits of the rules that decide to adopt once you consider the incentives they have on human behavior? That's really the beginning and the end of that's the only question you really need to ask about legislation and about also common law lawmaking.

Manny Fernandez (21:01):
I know that this is a broad topic, but I think that it emphasizes kind of the heft, the weight of this career and what I was talking about a little bit earlier, how many of the decisions you make as a lawyer do have impactful ramifications. So I want to ask you, how could some of our listeners, law students or young lawyers or people who are considering if law school is right for them, how could they prepare for careers that are at the, I guess this very, very important pivotal intersection of law, technology and regulation? What do you think?

Daniel Pi (21:36):
Yeah, if you're interested in regulation and technology, I mean, the obvious thing if you're interested in technology is to do ip. IP is the thing where what you're thinking about all the time is what are the incentives on innovation that is the cynic qan of that field. So if you're interested, and it's also you get to go into it. I mean, the thing about the law just generally is that the law is barely a subject. It is so parasitic. What it's really about is whatever the law is governing. So like agriculture law, it's really about agriculture. If you're interested in agriculture, great do law. Then you can study a lot of agriculture when you do agriculture. If you're interested in pharmaceuticals in the pharmaceutical industry, great. There's a kind of law for that too. The law intellectually, if you're interested in the subject, the law is a great thing.

(22:25):
Basically, you can study whatever you want, just the law that regulates that stuff. And if you're interested in technology and innovation, well, I mean patent law, copyright law, those are areas where all you're thinking about all day is the innovations that industry are creating. The other side of that, if you're interested in the regulatory aspect of it, is admin law. And you start to look at where the government oversteps and how you can sue the government, federal government to stop regulations that you think are excessive or that are hampering the forward progress of society. Or if you think that industry unchecked, they're going to run fast and break, maybe a few too many things, if that's your view, then you'd work for the government and try to come up with administrative rules and regulations to try to tamp down to pump the brakes a bit on the development of technology.

(23:15):
But I think those are the two main things. I mean, if you are interested in regulating the advancement of technology and trying to make sure it's done in a safe way or preventing excessive regulation of it, then admin law is the way to go. And if you're interested in the subject matter itself, then I would say something in the IP space is probably your best bet. I would also say that even if you're not interested in technology at all, it's almost inevitable that you're going to have to deal with quite a lot of it. I mean, we're living in a time where things are changing so fast and the law really is struggling to keep up with it. You're going to be faced with a lot of situations where there is no settled law, there are no settled rules. There are going to be a lot of novel circumstances where the law is forced to adapt, and you're going to be forced to make decisions at the cutting edge of it, even if you're just, it's a torts lawyer or you're doing wills in estates or some area where you wouldn't think that there's an obvious connection, you're going to find that there's a lot of new technology and new lawmaking that's attached to that that you're going to have to confront.

(24:15):
So it's kind of inevitable. Even if you don't seek it out, it's going to find you.

Manny Fernandez (24:21):
Well, thank you so much for your insight, professor Pi. It's been super eye-opening, and thanks for your time. We'll be right back.

Todd Berger (24:36):
So Manny, great interview with Professor Pi. A lot of really good stuff that you talked about from substantive issues in terms of what the future looks like at the intersection of technology and what our lives are going to look like. Also, a lot of really good stuff about if you're a law student and we're in this changing world, what does that mean for you? How will it impact your career? And what if you want to get involved in what the tech space looks like? So a lot of really good topics that you guys talked about. What were your big takeaways from your interview?

Manny Fernandez (25:07):
So I really felt like this interview, there's two ways to kind of look at the outpacing growing tech field, and there's really two ways to look at just all of the shifting ground that we're dealing with as law students and as legal professionals. There's some people who look at it pessimistically, and there's a lot of stuff that's changing for us in the administrative law context. For example, post Chevron, there's a lot of uncertainty, but there's also an optimistic take, which is that now we need educated and interested and passionate legal professionals more than ever. And so to me, there was something really impactful that Professor Pi mentioned, and he touched on this a lot throughout our interview, which is that the law doesn't really exist in a vacuum. The law has to feed off of some kind of a subject matter. So if you're a person who's super interested in tech, if you're a person who's super interested in administrative law or in policy or politics, whatever it is, there is a legal field for you.

(26:16):
And so this should be super exciting to anybody who's a young lawyer figuring out what their practice is going to be or somebody who's figuring out if law school is right for them. I think it makes our profession just all the more exciting. And I think as things change, there's more opportunities for young, brilliant minds to shape policy and shape the way our law works and the laws that impact all of our lives. So to me, this was a conversation not just about tech, but overall just how much the law just impacts and how important the law is when the world is changing and when the world is changing. Quickly.

Chay Rodriguez (26:54):
Todd, I wonder how you would see this Manny brought up kind of marrying your interests with your profession in the law. As someone who I know you love sports, would you ever be like, oh, I want to take my interest in sports and go into entertainment law, even though I know you're like criminal law do or die. But

Todd Berger (27:12):
Yeah, it's interesting. I think that for a lot of students, this is why I really appreciated your interview, Manny. A lot of students realize that we are in changing times, although I suppose you could probably say that about every generation of law students, but it does sort of feel, and you touched on this, Manny, like the early days of the internet in some sense that we are at this, as you said in the intro at this inflection point with technology and things like ai, which we hear about all of the time and automated cars, and there's a whole bunch of other things I think you guys talked about that are supposed to be the future that come up. And one of the issues is like, well, what does that mean for me and what does that mean for my career and how do I get a piece of that?

(28:00):
And I think one of the things that's a little bit complicated about how law students get a piece of that is that they wonder, how much do I need to know about technology? What if I took torts and I took Crim Pro? And there's some discussion in Crim Pro about technology, as you had alluded Touche, right? We moved from the payphone to privacy and the cell phone, but all of that is very different than Professor P was talking about when he said, well, you want to get involved in intellectual property. It's like, dude, what if I don't know that much about intellectual property or it's intersection with technology? I'm not a computer programmer. Is all of this stuff just magic that I'm going to have to learn about? And I think students can get really kind of intimidated by it. And I do wonder if there's a subset of students who are going to be the ones who feel much more comfortable with the tech that's going to define the future than other students who are just going to keep, and there's nothing wrong with this, but writing the wills and handling the car accident cases

Manny Fernandez (29:04):
To that, I would say that there is no better place to get out of your comfort zone than law school. I think almost as advocates and as lawyers, we have this duty, this responsibility to keep ourselves informed. It's tough because honestly, as a person who it does not have a hard science background, my instinct is to hide my head in the sand. But the truth is, if I want to be a more effective advocate, I can't hide from these new emerging changes in tech. My last internship, I was working at a courthouse and the judge who I worked with received warrants all the time that were pretty heavy on the tech, like geofence warrants and things like that. And it took some level of understanding some tech and understanding how internet servers work and stuff like that. And so there's just I think some degree where you just have to do the work, but I mean, still, this is me taking an optimistic view. There's still always going to be a place for everybody, and there's still always going to be a place, but I think even the people who write the wills and whatnot are going to pretty soon have to learn how to use chat GPT and the generative AI models and stuff like that too.

Todd Berger (30:25):
It's like they're going to start asking the questions When I die, who gets my NFTs?

Manny Fernandez (30:30):
Exactly. What happens then? Well with my precious NFTs? And so it's kind of something that we can't really hide from. I think the sooner you embrace it, this conversation I will admit was very heavy on the innovation pro tech side. There's always two sides to every conversation, but I really think that the law is one of those industries that has to very quickly embrace technology because we almost owe our clients that much. There's no hiding from it, I don't think.

Todd Berger (31:08):
Sure. I think you asked some really good questions too that I didn't think we're exactly unique to the tech world. And you touched on that. You sort of talked about how there's some analogies between tech and the pharmaceutical industry. It's this ultimate tension between how much regulation is necessary to protect society and how much at the same time does that regulation stamp out innovation and what is the right balance? And I think people have in various forms or another been asking themselves that question for most of the 20th century as sort of the regulatory state emerged, and that is an opportunity for students to shape in that sense what the future looks like, not just the future of these technologies. As we think about the future. I was thinking about, you had also talked about blockchain or cryptocurrency, which is this huge area we're talking about is it's a good thing, it's a bad thing.

(32:03):
How does it need to be regulated? There's some people who want it regulated, some people who don't. So this is really an opportunity for students to sort of begin shape, not just how people might use cryptocurrency in the tech side of things, but really shape what the future looks like in terms of trying to strike this balance that we've been trying to strike for a long time that you I think really did a good job of touching on it, the tension between public safety and innovation. And ironically in a sense, while that's brought about by the emergence of technologies that will impact us in the future, that's a discussion that, as I said, we've been having for a very long time in a lot of context throughout generations of lawyers.

Chay Rodriguez (32:45):
I think this conversation, Ali also put into perspective how, I think it used to be a quote that America's biggest export was like its pop culture, but now I could almost say that maybe our second biggest export is our contribution in tech. When we talked about all the other countries and regions that have heavy regulations put on their tech, so their texting isn't as big as ours. It really does put into perspective the opportunity that you have practicing law here to break into some sort of tech law if that's what you're interested in.

Manny Fernandez (33:21):
And I think you guys both make a point when it comes to regulation. Lawyers sort of stand at this crossroads of when should public safety really trump the onslaught of innovation? Because all of these things are so fun and exciting to think about self-driving cars. But as lawyers, we also have to think about how this is going to impact real people. And so I think it's a super awesome responsibility that we have and it can be super exciting, but it's also something where if we don't do it, if legal professionals don't do it, no one else is going to do it, right? Because these industries are becoming almost bigger than themselves. And so this is really why the law exists, right?

Todd Berger (34:11):
I'll just add to that, Manny. I say this to all of my classes, my criminal procedure classes. I had a professor say, this is my criminal procedure class. And I think this was totally true. He said, most of you'll go out there and you'll practice law, but not all of you. And many of you are just always somebody who runs for state rep, somebody who runs for Congress and ends up becoming involved in politics. And that happens. And so as all professors, we realize we're not just teaching students to be lawyers. This is primarily what we're doing. We're also teaching people who are going to use their law degree when they go into act, the actual governing process as elected representatives and shape what the world looks like. And it's not just you as lawyers who are going to be shaping what the regulatory state looks like in terms of these future technologies. It's going to be legislatures who are doing it right? It's going to be state legislature and Congress and people who are actually in elected positions. And that's some of you out there who are going to law school right now. So I think that there's a role to use your law degree in the future to shape the intersection of law and technology, even if you're not actually practicing law per se.

Manny Fernandez (35:20):
And in so many degrees, the law schools are just the incubators of a lot of these people's philosophies, the philosophies that later become real public policy that impacts everybody's lives. I thought one very interesting part of the conversation that came up time and again with Professor Pi was when we talked about the self-driving cars, it's kind of Professor Pi as somebody who is a economics guy and rational choice theory guy says, okay, what's the calculus that we do? How many self-driving cars with malfunctions do we allow out onto the road before we decide that it's worth the loss if eventually, if eventually the returns lead to less people dying on the road as we have now with humans driving cars? And so it's almost like that's a certain way to look at the law. It's a certain philosophy where you look at it in numbers, but then there's a people who have other judicial philosophies and it's law school where those judicial philosophies are formed, and it's here and now where the people who become Congress people and the people who later become litigators and litigate these very important disputes form their philosophy and their precepts.

(36:46):
And so it's important. I mean, I think the sooner law students or incoming law students become aware of these very real issues and sort of form their own opinions, the better because these are topics that are only going to get more complex and more complicated.

Chay Rodriguez (37:04):
It's funny, I think as a student especially, I think when you get a couple years under your belt in law school, when you hear certain things, you get triggered to think of different outcomes. So it's like as soon as he was talking about the automated cars and the cost benefit analysis of how many cars, all I kept thinking was, oh my gosh, how many wrongful death lawsuits, gross negligence, is there superseding cost between? My head was just like, I just start spotting issues immediately. And I was like, oh my gosh, but this is the cost part of what he's referring to also. So it was fun to see how my brain has changed and how I'm thinking, and maybe a little bit sad too. It was a little bleak for two seconds, and then I had to snap back into the episode. But amazing to hear how you can apply that way of thinking to different types of conversations. And I really enjoyed listening to this episode because of that.

Todd Berger (37:59):
Once again, thanks to Professor Daniel Pie. We want to hear more from you on this subject, so share your thoughts with us on the A law student division socials or through a review on Apple. If you're looking for even more content curated just for you, head over to the A Law Student division website and become a member. And before we go, we'd like to thank our production partners at Mora Media and thank you to the A law division for making this show a reality. We'll be back next month with our next episode. See you then.