Queen Mary University of London Doctoral Law Student Vasiliki Koukoulioti has won first place in The Centre for Legal and Court Technology (CLCT) of William & Mary Law School’s second annual Artificial Intelligence Writing Competition.
This year’s competition was split into two divisions: JD (or equivalent) and LLM students, and Doctoral law students, with Vasiliki taking home the prize for her paper titled 'What Are You tAxIng About? Balancing Out the Tax System to Avoid the Consequences of Automation in the Welfare System' [PDF 250KB] in the Doctoral Law Student division. Vasiliki’s paper explored the potential consequences for the welfare system in a context where human labour is increasingly being replaced with AI: “The increasing employment of robot technology may inevitably result in a steep reduction in the overall tax base and global welfare.” The paper also looks at potential solutions to shrinking labour taxes, such as automation tax, while considering possible drawbacks.
CLCT had this to say of the second annual writing competition: “The quality of the papers and issues analyzed were outstanding, presenting a wide range of thought-provoking arguments or proposing original paradigms to analyze novel legal challenges related to the use, and likely future uses, of new technologies.” The competition is open to law students across the globe.
The Center for Legal and Court Technology (CLCT) is a joint initiative of William & Mary Law School, the oldest law school in the United States, and the National Center for State Courts. In 2017, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (funded by Cisco) awarded a grant to CLCT to educate members of the legal profession on the legal issues likely to arise from the use of technologies such as machine/deep learning, large scale data analytics, and the Internet of Things.