Phone: (206) 543-1580
Email: rcalo@uw.edu
J.D. 2005, University of Michigan B.A., Dartmouth College
Law and Technology 鈥 Privacy 鈥 Artificial Intelligence 鈥 Robotics
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Ryan Calo is the Lane Powell and D. Wayne Gittinger Professor at the 红桃视频.聽He is a founding co-director (with Batya Friedman and Tadayoshi Kohno) of the interdisciplinary UW Tech Policy Lab and a co-founder (with Chris Coward, Emma Spiro, Kate Starbird, and Jevin West) of the UW Center for an Informed Public. Professor Calo holds a joint appointment at the Information School and an adjunct appointment at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering.
Professor Calo's research on law and emerging technology appears in leading law reviews (California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Duke Law Journal, UCLA Law Review, and University of Chicago Law Review)聽and technical publications (MIT Press, Nature, Artificial Intelligence) and is frequently referenced by the national media. His work has been translated into at least four languages. Professor Calo has testified four times before the United States Senate, most recently providing witness testimony on July 11, 2024, before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation at a hearing titled 鈥淭he Need to Protect Americans鈥 Privacy and the AI Accelerant.鈥 Professor Calo stressed the importance of a comprehensive federal privacy law that both protects Americans鈥 personal privacy and sets guidelines for businesses developing and implementing AI technology.
He has聽organized events on behalf of the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Obama White House. He has been a speaker at President Obama's Frontiers Conference, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and聽NPR's Weekend in Washington.
Professor Calo is a board member of the R Street Institute and an affiliate scholar at the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society (CIS), where he was a research fellow, and the Yale Law School Information Society Project (ISP). He serves on numerous advisory boards and steering committees, including University of California's People and Robots Initiative, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Without My Consent, the Foundation for Responsible Robotics, and the Future of Privacy Forum. In 2011, Professor Calo co-founded the premiere North American annual robotics law and policy conference We Robot with Michael Froomkin and Ian Kerr.
Professor Calo worked as an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Covington & Burling LLP and clerked for the Honorable R. Guy Cole, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Prior to law school at the University of Michigan, Professor Calo investigated allegations of police misconduct in New York City. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Dartmouth College.
Professor Calo won the Phillip A. Trautman 1L Professor of the Year Award in 2014 and 2017 and was awarded the Washington Law Review Faculty Award in 2019.
Research at the Tech Policy Lab is driven exclusively by faculty interest. The Tech Policy Lab seeks to produce impartial research and educational materials around technology policy. Given this goal, the Tech Policy Lab does not take research money from corporations or other private donors with strings attached. All private donors freely agree to give funds as unrestricted gifts, for which there is no contractual agreement and no promised products, results, or deliverables of any kind. Government and foundation grants also follow appropriate protocols to ensure neutrality. To see our sources of funding, visit聽.
Self-driving Waymo robotaxis have become a familiar sight in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, but not everyone is happy about that. These “ghost-like” autonomous vehicles have made a lot of people uneasy, some even going as far as to vandalize the cars. But what’s behind this hostility? In this episode, Morgan speaks with Bloomberg journalist Ellen Huet and robot law professor Ryan Calo to explore the rise of Waymo vandalism and its roots in our collective anxiety over artificial intelligence.
Ryan Calo is a University of Washington law professor and a co-founder of UW’s Tech Policy Lab. He told a Post reporter that Musk's attacks now carry a new power to chill speech. KUOW’s Kim Malcolm talked to Calo about that.
A look back at the Office of Technology Assessment, the Congressional think tank that detected lies and tested tech. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
“People do not feel safe speaking out in this country against the government,” said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington. “Because the government in the form of Elon Musk and President Trump himself will catalyze retribution.”
Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, joins Good Day Seattle to talk about the future of AI.
Calo said they could be sued by their stockholders for taking the risk of ignoring the TikTok ban, or by state attorneys general for breaking state laws. Trump (or a future president) could change his mind and try to retroactively sue companies for defying the ban.
"The law confers an extraordinary amount of power upon the office of the president," said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington who specializes in tech policy.
TikTok will be banned in the U.S. starting on Jan. 19, unless the popular social media platform cuts ties with its China-based parent company. Questions are being raised about whether the TikTok ban violates the First Amendment and whether it will actually be enforced. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is interviewed.
It is unclear if Mr. Trump, who has previously said he will spare the social media platform, will or can stop the ban. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
“You could have a policy not to enforce this ban,” University of Washington Law School professor Ryan Calo told The Times. “But I think that maybe conservative companies would just be like: ‘OK, you’re not going to enforce it. But it is on the books, and you could enforce at any time.’”
Mr. Trump could also try to work around the law by instructing the government not to enforce it. But app store operators and cloud computing providers could require more than a soft assurance from Mr. Trump that he will not punish them if they fail to execute the ban, said Ryan Calo, a professor at the 红桃视频.
Society + Technology is hosted at the UW’s Tech Policy Lab. Ryan Calo, a professor at the UW School of Law, is co-director of the lab and he served as chair of the UW Technology and Society Task Force, which was charged by the school’s president and provost, and issued a 2022 research report.
Only law enforcement authorities can take action against drones, said Ryan Calo, a University of Washington law professor and robotics law expert.
The holiday shopping season is in full swing and there’s lots of talk about how online shoppers are being tracked. If that creeps you out, you might be tempted to hit the mall instead. But AI is tracking you there, too. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
At the UW Center for an Informed Public, Kate Starbird, associate professor of human centered design and engineering at the UW and co-founder of the CIP, tracks falsehoods and counters them in real time. The UW's Danielle Lee Tomson, research manager at the CIP; Jevin West, associate professor in the Information School; Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School; and Emma Spiro, associate professor at the Information School and director of the CIP, are quoted.
Apple’s new iPhone 16 lineup features new colors, a new camera button and – perhaps most noteworthy — a new AI system. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
“AI is not a thing like a train or even a railway system, right?” said Ryan Calo, a professor at the 红桃视频 who is co-director of the UW Tech Policy Lab. “It’s best understood as a set of techniques that are aimed at approximating some aspect of human or animal cognition using machines. So you can’t regulate AI as such.”
Ryan Calo, Professor of Law at the University of Washington, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, to discuss how advances in AI are undermining already insufficient privacy protections. The two dive into Calo's recent testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Their conversation also covers the novel privacy issues presented by AI and the merits of different regulatory strategies at both the state and federal level.
The high court ruling green-lighting contact between government and tech companies to stymie falsehoods online hasn’t deterred a GOP campaign against academics, nonprofits and tech industry initiatives aimed at addressing their spread. The UW's Kate Starbird, associate professor of human centered design and engineering, and Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School, are quoted.
Dr. Ryan Calo, 红桃视频 and Co-Director of the University’s Technology Lab, warned that AI technologies, which are trained to recognize patterns in large data sets, are allowing companies to derive sensitive insights about individuals from seemingly innocuous information.
"We’ve just experienced the first serious attempted assassination of a presidential candidate in the social media age. How widely are conspiracy theories being spread by our largest platforms?" writes Julia Angwin. The UW's Kate Starbird, associate professor of human centered design and engineering, and Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School, are quoted.
Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., convened the hearing with experts from the 红桃视频, Mozilla, the AI Now Institute and ACT: the App Association to discuss the need to set a nationwide framework for how companies collect, use and share consumers' personal information and "why AI is an accelerant that increases the need for passing [such data privacy] legislation soon."
The Senate hearing will feature testimony from Ryan Calo, a professor at the 红桃视频 and co-director of the University of Washington Tech Policy Lab; Amba Kak, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute; and Udbhav Tiwari, director of global product policy at Mozilla.
Academics researching online misinformation in the US are learning a hard lesson: Academic freedom cannot be taken for granted. They face a concerted effort—including by members of Congress—to undermine or silence their work documenting false and misleading internet content. The claim is that online misinformation researchers are trying to silence conservative voices. The evidence suggests just the opposite.
"This is a very strong case of appropriation of likeness," Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington, told The Information's The Briefing newsletter.
Forcing TikTok to shut down its American operations over unspecified national security concerns would represent a violation of the First Amendment, according to six legal scholars surveyed by NPR. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
One of the challenges in regulating AI can be summarized by a quote from Ryan Calo of the 红桃视频, which Dayanim includes in his presentation: “AI isn’t a thing, like a train, but rather a set of techniques aimed at approximating some aspect of cognition.”
The tech moguls behind the Hill and Valley Forum are expanding beyond TikTok, prepping a proposal to dismantle President Biden’s artificial intelligence rules.
Federal auto regulators announced Friday they are opening an investigation into the safety of Tesla’s Autopilot feature, less than a week after a Tesla driver believed to be using it allegedly struck and killed a motorcyclist in Monroe. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW and co-director of the Tech Policy Lab, discusses the legality and impact of a potential TikTok ban.
The Washington State Patrol is investigating a fatal crash where the driver claims his Tesla was on autopilot when it fatally struck a motorcyclist. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
According to court documents, accepted forensic analysis of the video would be impossible because of the changes made by artificial intelligence. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
The lawyer of a college student who runs social media accounts to track Taylor Swift's and other celebrities' private jet spoke out to defend his client. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
Regardless of whether you believe Sweeney is the David to Swift’s Goliath in this situation, the legal threat raises some interesting questions: Is Sweeney’s tracking legal? Or does Swift’s team have a point—if not legally, then at least morally? To answer those questions, Slate spoke with Ryan Calo, a professor of law and information science at the University of Washington, who has previously weighed in on Sweeney’s scuffle with Musk. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
“It would be a very strange world where we didn’t bring to bear these tools to improve government and governance,” said University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo.
A robocall created with artificial intelligence that impersonated President Joe Biden and targeted voters in New Hampshire earlier this month is just the latest example of how rapidly advancing AI tools are a growing threat to elections — and more broadly to society. The UW's Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School, and Jevin West, associate professor in the Information School, are quoted.
European Union negotiators clinched a deal last Friday on the world’s first comprehensive artificial intelligence rules, paving the way for legal oversight of AI technology that has promised to transform everyday life and spurred warnings of existential dangers to humanity. Ryan Calo, professor of law at the UW, is interviewed.
PBS discusses AI and its possible consequences with the UW's Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School, and Chirag Shah, professor in the Information School and founding co-director of Center for Responsibility in AI Systems & Experiences.
New York City introduced a new addition to its police force, a fully autonomous, outdoor security robot. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
"All you need is somebody who's unscrupulous in politics — can you imagine?" said Ryan Calo, a professor of law and Information Science at the University of Washington.
“I can see the frustration in this [executive order] that a lot of this should be done by Congress but they’re not doing anything,” said Ryan Calo, a law professor specializing in technology and AI at the University of Washington. It’s unclear how deeply the order will affect the private sector, given its focus on federal agencies and “narrow circumstances” pertaining to national security matters, Calo added.
Some point out that the law’s framework is widely considered to be uncontroversial when applied to offline, brick-and-mortar businesses. Ryan Calo, a professor at the 红桃视频 and founding co-director at the UW Tech Policy Lab, characterized the CAADCA as “pretty routine regulation” of companies within California. “It’s not requiring the companies to say anything, nor is it censoring their speech, it is merely requiring them to be attentive to their design choices when children are involved,” Calo said. In other words, it polices the conduct rather than the speech of businesses.
Republican presidential hopefuls have largely shunned TikTok, the hugely popular video-sharing app that some in both parties allege is a potential spy mechanism for China. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
Because ethics is both subjective and not legally binding, they can readily be trumped by capitalist imperatives, said Ryan Calo, a professor at the 红桃视频 and a former member of the ethics board at Axon.
ChatGPT and other next-generation strains of artificial intelligence have revolutionized the tech world over the past year, and policymakers are ramping up their efforts to respond. Ryan Calo, professor of law at the UW, is quoted.
“Regulation of AI is essential,” Sam Altman, chief executive of technology firm OpenAI, told U.S. senators this May during a hearing on artificial intelligence. Many tech experts and nonexperts agree, and the clamor for legal guard rails around AI is rising. This year, the European Union is expected to pass its first broad AI laws after more than two years of debate. China already has AI regulations in place. Ryan Calo, professor of law at the UW, is quoted.
A Florida jury awarded $800,000 in damages to a 7-year-old girl on Wednesday for the suffering and mental anguish caused when a Chicken McNugget fell on her thigh, causing a second-degree burn. Ryan Calo, professor of law at the UW, is quoted.
"Since last October, when I raised a red flag about hype in the artificial intelligence field, investor enthusiasm has only grown exponentially (as have public fears). Wall Street and venture investors are pouring billions of dollars into AI startups — Microsoft alone made a $10-billion investment in OpenAI, the firm that produced the ChatGPT bot," writes business columnist Michael Hiltzik. Ryan Calo, professor of law at the UW, is quoted.
A public fixation on extinction from AI could empower industry insiders and distract from AI’s more immediate harms.
In San Francisco, President Biden convened a meeting of artificial intelligence experts to weigh its risks and opportunities and consider the role of the federal government in regulating the technology. Geoff Bennett discussed the meeting with Ryan Calo, a professor of law and information science at the University of Washington.
Professor Calo urges Congress to pass comprehensive legislation protecting Americans鈥 privacy amid developments in AI technology.
In three minutes, Ryan Calo, the Lane Powell & D. Wayne Gittinger Professor of Law, covers the Seattle Public Schools鈥 lawsuit against social media giants.
