Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur announced the launch of a new course titled Artificial Intelligence and Law.

The one-semester inter-disciplinary course has been developed at the Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Rights (RGSOIPL) and aims to start a discourse on the modes of societal governance and law by using the new era hybrid sociology.

Padmavati Manchikanti, the Dean of RGSOIPL, told a newswire, “This course addresses the paradigm shifts that are occurring due to the intense involvement of AI as autonomous systems that can possibly invent, participate in inventions with humans, create new expressions like music, paintings, and raising sensitive questions on inventorship, authorship, ownership of patents, copyright and designs.”

The RGSOIPL is one of the first law schools in the country that focuses on technology. Set up in 2006, the basis of the school has been to cater to the need for lawyers with technical expertise. It is a part of their global endeavour to integrate technology and law to build technical lawyers with the expertise to deal with the legal issues in the interface of technology and law.

Reportedly, Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, Shreya Matilal and Prabuddha Ganguli of RGSOIPL have been instrumental in initiating and formulating the cutting-edge syllabus for the course. 56 students have already enrolled for the same, said the official statement.

Earlier this March, IIT KGP had announced a Center of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence Research with seed funding from Capillary Technologies Limited. With a funding of ₹5.64 crores, the centre was to focus on key areas in AI and its kindred such as training, research, education, projects, entrepreneurship and incubation. The funding is to be utilised for establishing coursework design, computing infrastructure, software and hardware simulation platforms.

IIT KGP already boasts of AI specialist in areas such as financial analytics, industrial automation, digital healthcare, intelligent transportation system, agricultural internet of things and analytics, big data analytics for rural development, intelligent urban infrastructure, and safety-critical cyber-physical systems, among others.