3 ms·

>Law is seen as the lucrative profession perhaps most at risk from the recent advances in A.I. because lawyers are essentially word merchants. Many professions

>Law is seen as the lucrative profession perhaps most at risk from the recent advances in A.I. because lawyers are essentially word merchants. Many professions can be reduced to "$x Merchants". This reduction amounts to saying that the said profession does not require creativity/understanding/synthesis. I'd say a good lawyer is much more than a word merchant. He/she is a synthesizer of existing body of knowledge to create novel arguments. Loosely speaking, this type of activity seems NP hard. Now ChatGPT++ may be coming for those layer of most professions (programming and law included) that can be reduced to "lookup". However if you believe (as I do) that there are layers within most professions that are _more_ than lookup, and if those deeper layers solve some kind of an NP hard problem at their center (novel argument/theorem/algo/architecture...) then a lookup tool like ChatGPT would necessarily find it hard to address them. I'm obviously using things like "NP Hard" rather loosely and also assuming that AI, at least to the extent it uses training data, is no more than a lookup tool.

hammyhavoc 3y ago
As with the "code is law" crap with "smart contracts" in crypto, I can see the same problems emerging in courts. This happened, and I find it problematic: https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7bdmv/judge-used-chatgpt-to-make-court-decision https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7bdmv/judge-used-chatgpt-to... Human beings should be the ultimate arbiters of right and wrong because justice is not a concrete concept, it is very nuanced.
NoboruWataya 3y ago
I agree with this. A lot of law firms are themselves investing heavily in AI precisely to rationalise this "lookup" layer and thus increase the profitability of their core work. One challenge this throws up is that, currently, those employed in the lookup layer are usually junior lawyers who are gaining experience and confidence before they can go on to perform the more valuable work of drafting complex contracts, constructing novel arguments etc. If law firms automate away the lookup layer, they will actually need to re-think their approach to how they utilise junior lawyers. They'll still need to employ them, as they are the valuable lawyers of tomorrow, but unless they can re-deploy them to other useful tasks during that phase of their careers, the upside to automation is limited.
- __lbracket__ 3y ago
  You're right. I didn't think of the lookup layer as a bootcamp for moving into the creative/synthesis layer. And "lookup as a learning experience" applies to most professions. We can even say that this is probably "apprenticeship" in common terms.

hammyhavoc 3y ago

As with the "code is law" crap with "smart contracts" in crypto, I can see the same problems emerging in courts. This happened, and I find it problematic: https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7bdmv/judge-used-chatgpt-to-make-court-decision https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7bdmv/judge-used-chatgpt-to... Human beings should be the ultimate arbiters of right and wrong because justice is not a concrete concept, it is very nuanced.

NoboruWataya 3y ago

I agree with this. A lot of law firms are themselves investing heavily in AI precisely to rationalise this "lookup" layer and thus increase the profitability of their core work. One challenge this throws up is that, currently, those employed in the lookup layer are usually junior lawyers who are gaining experience and confidence before they can go on to perform the more valuable work of drafting complex contracts, constructing novel arguments etc. If law firms automate away the lookup layer, they will actually need to re-think their approach to how they utilise junior lawyers. They'll still need to employ them, as they are the valuable lawyers of tomorrow, but unless they can re-deploy them to other useful tasks during that phase of their careers, the upside to automation is limited.

__lbracket__ 3y ago
You're right. I didn't think of the lookup layer as a bootcamp for moving into the creative/synthesis layer. And "lookup as a learning experience" applies to most professions. We can even say that this is probably "apprenticeship" in common terms.