Artificial Intelligence and the Law in Canada

edited by Florian Martin-Bariteau and Teresa Scassa

Bringing together some of the leading Canadian scholars in the field, Artificial Intelligence and the Law in Canada captures the diversity of law and policy challenges facing Canada when it comes to AI. It offers insight into how existing laws might apply, what gaps are present, and what issues law reform should address. Because AI creates significant new challenges for law and public policy, each chapter begins with a summary of key challenges and issues from the perspective of the author, and ends with an assessment of risks and opportunities, and key gaps in the law.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to transform the economy, the nature of work, entire fields of human endeavour such as medicine and engineering, and the nature of government and commercial decision-making. Many of these transformations are already underway, with the technology advancing more quickly than we seem equipped to regulate it. Yet although there has been relatively little AI-specific litigation or legislation in Canada—or elsewhere for that matter—the rapid advance of these technologies creates a need to interrogate how our existing legal frameworks can apply or how they may need to adapt to this fundamentally disruptive technology.

This book reflects upon the risks and the potential for AI technologies, providing valuable insight into the state of AI and the law in Canada. The book is divided into discrete topics discussing how AI interfaces or impacts traditional subject areas of law such as: copyright law; patent and trade secrets; contract law; tort law; data protection law; competition law; administrative law; and health law. While promising important benefits, unchecked AI development raises significant challenges that may amplify existing injustices for individuals and the book explores the interface of AI with human rights; technology-facilitated violence and abuse; and “equality by design.” The book also considers the growing engagement of the legal profession—from lawyers to judges—with AI, with chapters discussing legal ethics; judicial decision-making; and legal analytics. This broad range of content highlights the transformative impacts of AI not just on legal principles, but on the very practice of law and justice. Finally, we offer insight about Canadian law in a global context, with chapters on international regulation, and an overview of the regulatory approaches in the European Union and the United States.

 

 

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The chapters are available in open access below.