AI Is Becoming Infrastructure, Not Software: What Stanford’s CodeX FutureLaw Reveals About The Next Era Of Intelligence
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/ai-becoming-infrastructure-not-software-033809118.html
Publish Date: 2026-04-19 23:38:00
Source Domain: ca.news.yahoo.com
Right now, AI has outgrown software and is entering a global infrastructure era. As it moves beyond innovation, is no longer viewed solely as a productivity tool, and begins to function as an institutional actor, it requires more structured and sustained governance conversations focused on accountability, trust frameworks, verification, global power dynamics, social impact, and whose values become encoded into emerging systems of law and policy.
Stanford Law School, ranked as the nation’s top law school by U.S. News, recently hosted its thirteenth annual FutureLaw conference at Stanford University through its global hub for legal tech innovation, CodeX.
CodeX is a multidisciplinary center between Stanford Law School and the Stanford Department of Computer Science dedicated to advancing computational law and improving efficiency, transparency, and access within legal systems.
This year’s conference brought together global leaders across law, technology, policy, and academia to examine the next frontier of legal informatics. In attendance alongside researchers, entrepreneurs, and practitioners focused on building more accountable systems, I engaged with how institutions are designing frameworks to regulate, verify, and collaborate with increasingly autonomous AI systems, while shaping the principles and protocols that will define the next decade of digital law.
Below are four key insights from Stanford’s FutureLaw 2026 and what they reveal about the future of AI and its global impact.
1. AI Is Built on Two Competing Models of Decision-Making
During the Rules, Patterns, and Hybrids session at the UN AI For Good Law Track, convened by Jeannette Eicks, associate dean and professor of Law at The Colleges of Law; and Oliver Goodenough, Stanford CodeX affiliate, research professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, and senior lecturer at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College, participants examined a foundational divide in artificial intelligence between…
