Overview

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Welcome to our MOOC on the legal and ethical goundations of AI in the real world, high-impacts sectors. This course is aimed at professionals and students interested in the legal and societal implications of AI. It is particularly relevant for legal practitioners, policymakers, public sector officials, private sector actors, civil society representatives, academics, and students who want to better understand how existing legal frameworks apply to emerging technologies. Throughout the course, you will examine how artificial intelligence reshapes healthcare, warfare and defence, criminal justice, intellectual property, and environmental governance. Across these domains, the course analyses accountability, human rights, liability, innovation, and justice in contexts where AI decisions have profound consequences. By the end of the course, you will be able to assess how sector-specific legal frameworks respond to AI deployment and evaluate the balance between technological innovation and fundamental rights protection. The course culminates in a Capstone Project, where you develop a structured AI Impact Assessment Paper (2500 – 3000 words). This document can serve as a portfolio-level deliverable - demonstrating to employers, institutions, or academic programs that you can analyse complex AI systems through a legal-ethical lens and design informed, responsible solutions.

Syllabus

AI in Healthcare
- This module explores how AI is transforming healthcare - from diagnostics to predictive analytics - and what this means for consent, data protection, liability, and patient rights. Building on MOOC 1 (trust and responsibility) and MOOC 3 (ethics and fairness), learners connect abstract legal ideas to concrete medical contexts.
AI in War and Defence
- This module examines AI in military and security contexts, focusing on accountability, human oversight, and the ethics of autonomous systems. It builds on MOOC 1’s accountability discussions and MOOC 2’s governance focuses to explore international humanitarian law, proportionality, and emerging doctrines of cognitive warfare.
AI and Criminal Justice
- AI now supports policing, sentencing, and correctional decisions. Building on MOOC 3’s focus on fairness and access to justice, this module examines due process, discrimination, and explainability in criminal law.
Who Owns AI Creations? - IP Made Simple
- This module demystifies intellectual property and AI creativity. It expands on MOOC 1’s “AI as a person” debate and MOOC 2’s regulatory frameworks to discuss authorship, inventorship, and data ownership in plain language.
AI and the Environment
- This module links environmental governance and AI ethics. Learners explore how AI supports sustainability and how data-driven systems might exacerbate inequality or environmental harm. It builds on MOOC 3’s justice framework and MOOC 2’s governance lens.
Final Project - Complete AI Impact Assessment
- Learners will bring together insights from all four MOOCs to design a full AI Impact Assessment. This capstone integrates technical understanding (MOOC 1), governance and accountability (MOOC 2), ethics and justice (MOOC 3), and applied sectoral insights (MOOC 4).