Biglaw, Technology

One Biglaw Firm Wants To Be Ready For Our New Robot Overlords

It pays to be ready.

By  
on

Broken robot before a destroyed cityIt looks like the symbiotic relationship between K&L Gates and their client, Carnegie Mellon University, continues. Earlier this year, Carnegie Mellon obtained a $750 million settlement in a patent infringement lawsuit — which netted the firm a cool $210 million in fees. Now comes word that K&L Gates is making a big donation to the school.

Law.com reports on the $10 million endowment, which will support the study of the ethical implications of artificial intelligence:

Carnegie Mellon and K&L Gates, both based in Pittsburgh, announced Wednesday the formation of the K&L Gates Endowment for Ethics and Computational Technologies. The bulk of the gift will be used to further scientific and scholarly research about the ethical and policy issues surrounding artificial intelligence and other computational technologies.

The endowment will create one senior and one junior faculty position, along with three presidential fellowships for doctoral students studying in the area of ethics and computational technologies. The endowment will also fund a biennial international conference to share new research in the field.

K&L Gates chairman Peter Kalis had this to say about the gift:

“As a society, our ethical choices in this field will greatly influence what kind of world we will have. Its values. Its culture. Its laws. And, ultimately, its humanity,” Kalis said in the statement. “With this initiative, we honor not only our longstanding relationship with CMU, but also the commitment of both organizations to our civilization now and in the future.”

And, you know, they want to be ready for when Westworld becomes reality.

Sponsored

Kathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Sponsored

Topics

, , , , , , , , , ,