Phone:
(206) 543-1580
Email: rcalo@uw.edu
J.D. 2005, University of Michigan B.A., Dartmouth College
Law and Technology — Privacy — Artificial Intelligence — Robotics
| Course Number | Course Name |
|---|---|
| LAW A 504 |
Torts |
See the full list under the Publications tab below.
Ryan Calo is the Virginia and Prentice Bloedel Professor at the University of Washington. He co-founded the interdisciplinary UW Tech Policy Lab, Society + Technology & UW initiative, and 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) and technical publications (MIT Press, Nature, Science, Artificial Intelligence). His work has been translated into five languages and is frequently referenced by the national media. Professor Calo has testified four times before the United States Senate. He is the author most recently of Law and Technology: A Methodical Approach (Oxford University Press 2025).
Professor Calo is a board member of the Electronic Information Privacy Center and the literary organizations Hugo House and The Frost Place. He serves on the steering committee of Stanford A100 and We Robot, an annual robotics and the law conference which he co-founded, as well as the advisory boards of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Schwartz Reisman Institute, and other organizations. He also serves as a privacy judge for the World Bank.
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. In 2026, he was selected as a Top 50 Legal Innovator in Academia by The National Review.
Courts find companies liable for negligence when they foresee that their products can cause harm. But building that case could be challenging if an A.I. model exhibited harmful behavior for the first time, said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington who studies autonomous systems.
Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington, says some risks are easier to anticipate than others. “It is very foreseeable that an AI designed to hack its way in and out of systems would escape confinement,” he says. “Other actions maybe less so.” So, much could depend on what the company knew before the incident, and what it did about it. (In the case of the Australian hack, much of this debate is moot, says Martin, because no one was harmed in the first place).
Meta says Muse is just for adults, though its cuddly, Labubu-like mascot—and upcoming Tamagotchi-style AI device—may be disarming for users of all ages. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
WSJ AI & Business newsletter: "AI Leaders Are Standing On a Liability Landmine. Plus, Anthropic delays its IPO, and AI agents have trust issues." A paper co-authored by Professor Calo on liability for agentic AI is cited.
Recent news about AI safety is fueling a new wave of political and societal fear. Five UW AI researchers (including UW Law's Ryan Calo) discuss the real risks of AI and what to do about them.
As frontier artificial intelligence labs once again caution about the speed of the technology’s development, Microsoft released a code of conduct for how it plans to clamp down on its own AI models. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo tells Axios courts are unlikely under current law to impose strict liability on AI makers — at least if they see AI as socially useful.
“The potential that this company could be a part of the experience that Seattle 911 callers have and they don’t know it, that raises serious concerns,” Ryan Calo, a University of Washington law professor and co-director of the university’s Tech Policy Lab, said. “I’m troubled on a number of levels.”
“The AG has a lot of power, but not enough to bring every violation of the law. So you have to think of the Eye of Sauron, and whether it will focus on you. If you’re a little startup, probably not, but if you’re Meta, probably yes,” Calo said.
University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo does not believe a criminal case would be likely to succeed. "The company or individual would have to be at least reckless," he said, explaining they would "be substantially certain the crime would occur and build or prompt the system anyway."
Optionion: "California's attempt to make state government use of AI more transparent was an interesting experiment that predictably failed." Professor Calo is cited.
"California's AI transparency law let state agencies hide high-risk systems affecting housing, health care and benefits, experts say." Professor Calo is cited.
For more than two years, a Denmark-based company’s artificial intelligence technology has been listening to Seattle residents’ 911 medical calls without their knowledge. The UW's Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School; Jevan Hutson, acting assistant professor of law; Franziska Roesner, professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering; and Soham Gadgil, a doctoral student of computer science and engineering, are quoted.
The Seattle Fire Department started using AI technology during live 911 calls in 2023. There hasn't been any public review process." Professors Calo and Hutson are quoted.
Adorable machines have a secret advantage when it comes to their human owners, according to professor Ryan Calo.
The state judge overseeing New Mexico’s attempt to force a safety overhaul of Instagram and Facebook said Monday that he’s worried some of the proposed changes would amount to “overreach.” Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
“My goals were really to help new entrants to the field, students, newer faculty, maybe even professors who've been working in the academy for a long time, but are new to technology, have a place to start,” Calo said. “Second, to hopefully provide a little more coherence and cohesion around the field because law and technology have long been simply held together by subject matter.”
Since Ryan Calo joined University of Washington School of Law in 2012, he has become a leading expert on the law and emerging technology.
Real-life therapists have a legal requirement, called a duty to warn, to report a patient’s plan to harm others, said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington.
But adult deepfakes have not gotten the same level of attention from content platforms or the venture capital firms that fund them. “They are not afraid enough of it. They are overly tolerant of it,” Calo says. “Neither law enforcement nor civil courts adequately protect against it. It is night and day.”
If you’ve spent the past decade watching the parade of tech wearables (pins, pendants, rings, clips, glasses), it’s reasonable to ask whether people will use ones powered by AI—not just for a TikTok video but on the subway, in a meeting or at dinner with a spouse. And if so, a bigger question remains: What level of social tolerance will such devices have? Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
Police around the country routinely use facial recognition after a crime, to speed up the identification of suspects caught on camera. But live facial recognition, which can name and track a person moving around a city in real time, has been slower to catch on in the U.S. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
"Ryan Calo, a professor at the University of Washington School of Law focusing on robotics law, said that the technology could deepen public skepticism toward law enforcement, and said clear guidelines are critical for safe deployment."
In his new book, Law and Technology: A Methodical Approach, published by Oxford University Press, Calo argues that if the purpose of technology is to expand human capabilities and affordances in the name of innovation, the purpose of law is to establish the expectations, incentives, and boundaries that guide that expansion toward human flourishing. The book "calls for a proactive legal scholarship that inventories societal values and configures technology accordingly."
Friday morning on "Good Day Seattle," FOX 13 Seattle Anchor Bill Wixey spoke with Ryan Calo, a professor at the University of Washington School of Law, to shed more light on the subject.
It's not uncommon to spot a drone in the skies in metro Detroit. With the technology, there are a host of federal rules for users to follow. But what if you see one flying above your home? Ryan Calo, professor of law, is quoted.
A May court order has − at least temporarily − prevented ChatGPT's parent company OpenAI from honoring user requests to delete the history of personal accounts. The move has created confusion over what exactly is ChatGPT history. Is it public? Could it be used against you? Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
“If a driverless car is involved in an accident, people are going to get nervous about them,” said Calo. “They need a trusted expert body that’s impartial, like the Department of Transportation, to be able to look at those situations in a sober ride way and determine [...] what to do about it.”
For years, the Office of Technology Assessment helped Congress see around corners on science and tech. Its 1995 shutdown left lawmakers flying blind. Ryan Calo, professor of law and in the Information School at the UW, is quoted.
'Calo’s new book, “Law and Technology: A Methodical Approach,” examines how society can handle challenging new technologies. He talks to us about why we don’t have to passively adopt all innovations, and how we can rethink our interactions with technology.'
Speaking before the latest promise of an extension, Ryan Calo, a professor at the University of Washington law school who follows tech, says Trump has operated outside the statutory framework so far. "This president is not operating within Congress's intent," he said. "It sets a bad precedent, wherein the president feels like he can simply ignore a congressional statute."
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 University of Washington School of Law.
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 University of Washington School of Law 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.
Professor Ryan Calo co-authored this practice-oriented guide to filing and defending lawsuits based on breaches of customer data.
Professor Calo urges Congress to pass comprehensive legislation protecting Americans’ 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’ lawsuit against social media giants.
