Synthetic Data and the Future of AI

This event is co-organized by the Law and Technology Centre and the Programme on Artificial Intelligence and the Law, HKU Faculty of Law

Date: May 21, 2025 (Wednesday)

Time: 12pm – 1pm

Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong

Speaker: Peter Lee (Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law & Director, Center for Innovation, Law, and Society, University of California, Davis)

The future of artificial intelligence (AI) is synthetic. Several of the most prominent technical and legal challenges of AI derive from the need to amass huge amounts of real‑world data to train machine learning (ML) models. Collecting such real‑world data can be highly difficult and can threaten privacy, introduce bias in automated decision making, and infringe copyrights on a massive scale. This talk will explore the emergence of a seemingly paradoxical technical creation that can mitigate these concerns: synthetic data. Increasingly, data scientists are using simulated driving environments, fabricated medical records, fake images, and other forms of synthetic data to train ML models. Artificial data, in other words, is training artificial intelligence. This talk will explore several benefits and risks of training ML models on synthetic data, and it will examine a host of “innovation mechanisms” to ensure its robust and responsible development.

Peter Lee teaches and writes in the field of innovation law and policy. His research focuses on patent law and other fields of intellectual property, technology transfer, artificial intelligence (AI), and science policy. Professor Lee’s scholarship has appeared in The Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, California Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Michigan Law Review, and other leading journals. Professor Lee is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and he has received numerous awards for his scholarly work, including the UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellowship, the Samsung-Stanford Patent Prize, and inclusion in West/Thomson’s annual Intellectual Property Law Review. Professor Lee has held visiting or invited positions at the University of Oxford, Seoul National University, and Melbourne Law School, and he speaks widely on intellectual property matters in the United States and abroad.

Commentators:

Julian Nowag, Associate Professor, The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law

Simon Goldstein, Associate Professor, The University of Hong Kong Department of Philosophy

Moderator: Haochen Sun, Professor, The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law

To register, please go to https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&UEID=99935.

For inquiries, please contact Ms. Grace Chan at mcgrace@hku.hk / 3917 4727.