Professionals Beyond AI

Professionals Beyond AI

Another thoughtful critique by Lyuben Todev

#GooglePlusKnowledge

Originally shared by Lyuben Todev

AI Future For Legal Services?

I have been planing to comment on this article for well over a month – and the reason is we have been swamped in work for the last few weeks. Therefore, I guess it’d be pleasant to have an AI helping out.

However, I doubt that most of the work I have done could have been done by an AU instead – because there is a lot of decisions to be made. And with these decisions there are two separate issues:

1. The new General Data Protection Regulation sets some requirements for automated decisions;

2. Actually these decisions are based on a very case-specific assessment.

Now, the second issue is the one I believe is the more important in this case. AI learns on basis of analogies and calculating possibilities – and both principles are suited well when we are dealing with physical reality. People, on the other hand are more difficult to predict. The variety in our society comes exactly from individuals craving different things – and these cravings are rarely logical. We act on basis of affectations, grudges, etc. Trying to throw an AI in that mess seems both ineffective and cruel – because while there might be many things we as humans share in common, our motivations remain strictly personal.

And this emphasizes the importance of personal contact – getting to know people beyond the legal problem they perceive – because it might be quite different from the problem they actually have.

AIs can very useful though – when it comes to browsing and indexing court practice. And for me this is the future of AI in legal services – because an algorithm cannot substitute the decision-making process. However, it can go through huge volumes of data – and learn how to choose the right questions to ask when doing so.

Considering this I don’t believe AI will have a great effect on the number of legal professionals a society needs. And therefore I wonder whether the UK, given the article below, might soon see as a mistake the decision to significantly reduce the number of junior associates in law firm. After all, when the senior partners finally retire, someone has to take up the torch and go on.

#technology #AI #LegalServices