Understanding the ethical and legal use of AI is important for any business. In a new episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell and the fourth installment of the “Generative AI” series, Cornell Tech professor Karan Girotra pairs up with professor Frank Pasquale from Cornell Law School to discuss the laws and ethics of generative AI while looking at performance guarantees as well as unintended consequences and outcomes.

The conversation highlights how organizations in finance, health, education, media and manufacturing are using these technologies in clever ways and charts a path for the next generation of use cases — ones that go beyond using assistants to enhance individual productivity.

"I always get my yearly skin exam with a dermatologist and I have yet to find one that is, say, taking pictures and running them through an AI program that could notice or could identify melanomas. And that to me, is the quintessential use case for AI in medicine, this kind of ability to spot patterns in massive amounts of data. They have millions of moles and datasets, they have hundreds of thousands that are cancerous. There are many ways in which they can be more effective than the typical doctor looking for asymmetry, discoloration, the ABCDE elements of spotting melanomas. 

"So that, I think, is really important, and I hope to see a world in five to ten years where that just becomes de rigueur. You just are expected to do that. Now of course, one thing that's probably holding that back is the ongoing drumbeat to contain healthcare costs, right? And so this is another thing that I think is quite important about AI and medicine, is that we realize that probably the promise here is less low-cost medicine than higher quality medicine, if we're willing to invest in it."

—Frank Pasquale

Tune in to Episode 48, AI Today: Laws, Ethics, and Protecting Your Work.

The Cornell Keynotes podcast is brought to you by eCornell, which offers more than 200 online certificate programs to help professionals advance their careers and organizations. Karan Girotra and Frank Pasquale are authors of the Generative AI for Productivity certificate. Additional online and in-person programs from these Cornell faculty members include:

• AI 360
• AI for Digital Transformation
• Cornell Tech Board of Directors Forum
• Digital Leadership
• Omnichannel Leadership Program
• Retail Media Strategy

Learn more about all of our generative AI certificate programs and follow Girotra on LinkedIn and X.

Visit Simplecast to read more about this episode, and join Cornell’s most celebrated scholars and industry experts for candid conversations on trending topics and current events by subscribing to the Cornell Keynotes podcast.

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Quotes have been edited for clarity.