Legal & Psychodynamic Perspectives on AI Adoption in Entertainment: Risks, Realities, and Responsible Use

Alexander Stein, PhD is the Founder and Managing Principal of Dolus Advisors, a consultancy specializing in psychologically complex enterprise challenges, and a Principal in the Boswell Group. Trained and licensed as a psychoanalyst, Dr. Stein advises CEOs, senior management teams, and boards across a broad range of industries on leadership, culture, governance, ethics, risk, and organizational matters with complex psychological dimensions. He is also an internationally regarded authority on human risk and the psychodynamics of fraud, and serves on the advisory boards of several technology firms, where he consults on human-centered technologies and their unintended consequences. Dr. Stein is widely published and has contributed to Forbes on the psychology of decision-making and unintended consequences in organizations and society.

David Shraga is a private mediator specializing in entertainment, media & intellectual property. Having worked on all sides of the Hollywood ecosystem for more than 20 years, David offers rare experience and insight as a neutral.   

For the first dozen years of his career, he was a trial lawyer focused on cases involving talent, entrepreneurs, and bet-the-company litigation in entertainment and media.  He trained as a Senior Associate at the prominent law firm Alschuler Grossman Stein & Kahan LLP before founding his own firm KSW LLP. David then pivoted and for the next decade worked in-house as a studio executive, where he advised studio presidents, top tier producers, and other senior leadership.  His roles have included SVP and Head of Global Television Business & Legal Affairs for Miramax, VP of Business & Legal Affairs for NBCUniversal’s International Television Studio, and Senior Counsel for Legal Affairs at Universal Pictures.  

David is an expert in all aspects of domestic and international development, financing, production and distribution; has overseen billions in deals and budgets, and has negotiated with the top agents, lawyers, talent, studios, and distributors in the global television and film industries. With his uncommon background as both a litigator and in-house dealmaker, David offers a unique understanding of the complex considerations studios, sophisticated parties and their representatives must balance while making deals, while in litigation, and while mediating.  

David was on the Law Review while at the University of Southern California School of Law, externed for the Hon. Dean D. Pregerson (C.D. of Cal.) and received his BA from Yale.

David is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Entertainment Law Section of the Beverly Hills Bar Association; is the Outreach Coordinator and a Co-Host for the Will Work For Food Project – a webinar series which raises donations for food banks around the world; serves as a volunteer mediator for the Los Angeles Superior Court; is a member of the Southern California Mediation Association; is on the volunteer mediation panel for California Lawyers For The Arts; and volunteers with the Western Center on Law & Poverty to train high school peer mediators.