Our Speakers

Mantegna defines herself as having the mind of a scholar, the skillset of a lawyer, and the heart of an activist.  

Most people know her as the Abogamer, a video game lawyer and activist specializing in AI ethics, XR policy, and the intersection of artificial intelligence, creativity, culture, and copyright law. Jokingly, she calls herself the Cassandra of tech ethics, blessed with foresight, doomed not to be listened to on time.

Her research has been consistently ahead of the curve: predicting the AI revolution while it was still widely considered science fiction; then the battles of generative AI and copyright, and for the past several years, discussing the upcoming deployment of neuroware interfaces to connect to digital experiences.

In 2022, she became a TED Fellow, and her TED talk on the ethics of the metaverse has been viewed over 1.5 million times worldwide.

She has been an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University, served on the World Economic Forum’s Metaverse Council, and contributed to Chatham House’s Responsible AI Taskforce.

Currently, she is an affiliate at MetaLAB (Harvard, Berlin, Basel), a Salzburg Global Fellow, and a Datasphere Initiative Fellow. 

Her work at the intersection of arts and technology has been featured at Ars Electronica, Sonar Festival, and beyond. She is also a 2024 and 2025 S+T+ARTS Prize Advisor, and author of books on AI and creativity.

Matthew Sag is Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Science at Emory University School of Law. Sag is an expert in copyright law and intellectual property. He is a leading U.S. authority on the fair use doctrine in copyright law and its implications for researchers in the fields of text data mining, machine learning and AI.

He was born and educated in Australia and earned honors in Law at the Australian National University in Canberra and clerked for Justice Paul Finn at the Australian Federal Court. Sag practiced law London as an associate at Arnold & Porter, and in Silicon Valley  with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Prior to Emory, he taught at DePaul University and Loyola Chicago; he has also held visiting posts at Northwestern University, the University of Virginia and the University of Melbourne.

Sag is currently working on several theoretical contributions to copyright law in relation to AI and machine learning and a series of empirical papers using text-mining and machine learning tools to study judicial behavior. His work has been published in leading journals such as Nature, and the law reviews of the University of California Berkeley, Georgetown, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Iowa and William & Mary, among others. His research has been widely cited in academic works, court submissions, judicial opinions and government reports.

Jeremy Sheff is a Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Intellectual Property Law Center at St. John’s University School of Law. He teaches Property, Introduction to Intellectual Property, Patent Law, Trademark Law, International Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence Law, and First Amendment Law.

Professor Sheff’s research interests span Intellectual Property Law, Law and Technology, Property Law, and Legal Theory.  His research focuses on how law mediates the creation, dissemination, and use of information and knowledge in social, cultural, and economic exchange. He approaches these questions from various methodological perspectives, including theoretical, empirical, doctrinal, and interdisciplinary work. In addition to his work at St. John’s, Professor Sheff has also taught at NYU School of Law and Cardozo School of Law, and has served as an Invited Overseas Researcher at the Institute of Intellectual Property in Tokyo, Japan.

Professor Sheff received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Columbia University in 1999, and his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 2002.  While at Harvard he was an editor and symposium chair of the Harvard Law Review.  After graduation, he clerked for Hon. C. P. Sifton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Prior to his arrival at St. John’s, Professor Sheff worked as a litigator for five years at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, where his practice covered a broad variety of commercial disputes, including intellectual property litigation, antitrust litigation, contract disputes, and commercial tort claims.