Bio
Jake Okechukwu Effoduh is a CIGI senior fellow and an assistant professor at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Toronto Metropolitan University. His research focuses on the intersections of artificial intelligence (AI), human rights and international law. He has contributed his expertise to a broad range of AI policy development issues across Africa and countries such as Brazil, Canada, China and the United States.
He has carried out legal advocacy within sub-regional and regional systems such as the Economic Community of West African States Community Court of Justice, the East African Court of Justice, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Council. Jake received the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Explore Grant for his work, Codes for Algorithmic Justice, which evaluated regulatory solutions for algorithmic bias against Black Canadians in the diaspora, and he is an inaugural recipient of the Black-Focused Pedagogy Grant for his work on critical race theory and Afrofuturism in AI and the law.
He is also the convener of Black Futures by Design, a conference advancing racial justice in AI governance and regulation; and a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization expert on AI and the rule of law, providing training to judges, law teachers and legal officers on the use of AI in legal and judicial contexts. A Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst fellow, Jake has also previously held fellowships at Harvard Law School, Harvard Kennedy School, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Ottawa and the University of Cape Town.
He serves as editor-in-chief of the Transnational Technology Law Review and as an editor of the Transnational Human Rights Review. Jake’s work has been published in the Harvard Human Rights Journal; The Journal of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & Law; the Journal of Scholarly Publishing; The Journal of Sustainable Development Law and Policy; the African Journal of Legal Studies; and Third World Approaches to International Law Review; and by Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press.