7 ms·

Not worth reading. > this paper focuses specifically on the zero-sum nature of AI labor automation... When AI automates a job - whether a truck driver, lawyer,

Not worth reading. > this paper focuses specifically on the zero-sum nature of AI labor automation... When AI automates a job - whether a truck driver, lawyer, or researcher - the wages previously earned by the human worker... flow to whoever controls the AI system performing that job. The paper examines a world people will pay an AI lawyer $500 to write a document instead of paying a human lawyer $500 to write a document. That will never happen.

geysersam 2y ago
> zero sum nature of labor automation Labor automation is not zero sum. This statement alone makes me sceptical of the conclusions in the article. With sufficiently advanced AI we might not have to do any work. That would be fantastic and extraordinarily valuable. How we allocate the value produced by the automation is a separate question. Our current system would probably not be able to allocate the value produced by such automation efficiently.
hartator 2y ago
Yeah, and this applies to every technology ever. You can even use the same argument line against the wheel, electricity, or farming.
tim333 2y ago
I agree that quote seems wrong. When tech reduces the cost of providing a service, the price of the service to consumers is generally driven down correspondingly by competition rather than the service provider getting rich. The whole AI will cause interest rates to shoot up thing seems a bit mad.
pessimizer 2y ago
> The paper examines a world people will pay an AI lawyer $500 to write a document instead of paying a human lawyer $500 to write a document. That will never happen. It's an absurd assumption made by AI investors everywhere. They can't handle a world where everyone already has an AI lawyer at home that they trust, that they have because they once paid $100 for it at a kiosk in the mall or pirated it. The real future is an AI lawyer on your keychain and an extreme devaluation of the skill of knowing the law and making legal arguments. Instead, we're going to have a weirder world where you show up to court and the court already has a list of your best legal arguments that they generated completely independent of you, and they largely match the list of arguments that your own AI advisor app gave you. They'll send you messages regarding your best next steps, and if your own device agrees, all you'll have to do is reply 'Y.' For simple document preparation, I'm pretty sure that your phone will be able to handle it, and AI at the point of submission would be able to give you helpful suggestions if the documents were inadequate. LLMs can almost do things of this degree of difficulty reasonably well now. Where will they be (or their successors be) in 10 years? Why do we think they will be as expensive as lawyers, who you have to send to difficult schools for a long time, feed, and flatter?
asdff 2y ago
What like how streaming services were supposed to save you money on cable now everyones subscriptions add up to more than cable? The incentives mean if there is money on the table to be taken it will be taken. If they are paying lawyers $500 an hour there is money for that for an ai. Especially if that company is claiming the ai is the best lawyer ever.
smeeger 2y ago
foolish assumption on your part
kev009 2y ago
That's a bit too simplistic; would a business have paid IBM the same overheads to tabulate and send bills with a computer instead of a pool of billing staff? In business the only justification for machinery and development is that you are somehow reducing overheads. The tech industry gets a bit warped in the pseudo-religious zeal around the how and that's why the investments are so high right now. And to be transparent I'm very bearish on what we are being marketed to as "AI"; I see value in the techs flying underneath this banner and it will certainly change white collar jobs but there's endless childish and comical hubris in the space from the fans, engineers, and oligarchs jockeying to control the space and narratives.
gopalv 2y ago
> The paper examines a world people will pay an AI lawyer $500 to write a document instead of paying a human lawyer $500 to write a document Is your theory that the next week there will be an AI lawyer that charges only 400$, then it is a race to the bottom? There is a proven way to avoid a race to the bottom for wages, which is what a trade union does - a union by acting as one controls a large supply of labour to keep wages high. Replace that with a company and prices, it could very well be that a handful of companies could keep prices high by having a seller's market where everyone avoids a race to the bottom by incidentally making similar pricing calls (or flat out illegally doing it).
- WithinReason 2y ago
  You would need to coordinate across thousands of companies across the entire planet
  - rvense 2y ago
    That seems unlikely - law is very much tied to a place.
    - IncreasePosts 2y ago
      Yes, but legal documents don't necessarily need to be drafted by lawyers accredited in that locale. It usually helps though because they are familiar with the local law and other processes.
- echelon 2y ago
  > There is a proven way to avoid a race to the bottom for wages, which is what a trade union does US automotive, labor, and manufacturing unions couldn't remain competitive against developing economies, and the jobs moved overseas. In the last few years, after US film workers went on strike and renegotiated their contracts, film production companies had the genius idea to start moving productions overseas and hire local crews. Only talent gets flown in. What stops unions from ossifying, becoming too expensive, and getting replaced on the international labor market?
riku_iki 2y ago
> people will pay an AI lawyer $500 to write a document instead of paying a human lawyer $500 to write a document. there will be caste of high-tech lawyers very soon which will be able to handle many times more volume of work thanks to AI, and many other lawyers will lose their jobs.
- 6510 2y ago
  This is how it has always been. Automation makes a job require less traditionally required knowledge, the tasks less complicated and increases productivity. This introduces new complexity that machines can't solve. The funny part is that people think we will run out of things to do. Most people never hire a lawyer because they are much to expensive.
- petesergeant 2y ago
  Yes, that is obvious. The point you are replying to is that oversupply will mean the cost to the consumer will fall dramatically too, rather than the AI owner capturing all of the previous value.
  - riku_iki 2y ago
    It depends. If there will be one/few winners on the market, they will dictate price after human labor out-competed through the price or quality.
    - jezzabeel 2y ago
      If prices are determined by scarcity then the cost of services will more likely be tied to the price for energy.
- sgt101 2y ago
  I know one ! She's got international experience and connections but moved to a small town. She was a magic circle partner years ago. Now she has a FTTP connection and has picked up a bunch of contracts that she can deliver on with AI. She underbid some big firms on these because their business model was traditional rates, and hers is her cost * x (she didn't say but >1.0 I think) Basically she uses AI for document processing (discovery) and drafting. Then treats it as the output of associates and puts the polish on herself. She does the client meetings too obviously. I don't think her model will last long - my guess is that there will be a transformation in the next 5 years across the big firms and then she will be out of luck (maybe not at the margin though). She won't care - she'll be on the beach before then.
cgcrob 2y ago
They also forget the economic model that you have to pay $5000 for a real lawyer after the fact to undo the mess you got yourself in by trusting the output of the AI in the first place which made a nuanced mistake that the defending "meat" lawyer picked up in 30 seconds flat. The proponents of AI systems seem to mostly misunderstand what you're paying for really. It's not writing letters.
- jjmarr 2y ago
  https://www.stimmel-law.com/en/articles/story-4-preprinted-forms-dont-go-trial https://www.stimmel-law.com/en/articles/story-4-preprinted-f... Love this story so much I just posted it. Although it's from an era in which you'd buy CDs and books containing contracts, it's still relevant with "AI". > “No lawyer writes a clause who is not prepared to go to court and defend it. No lawyer writes words and let’s others do the fighting for what they mean and how they must be interpreted. We find that forces the attorneys to be very, very, very careful in verbiage and drafting. It makes them very serious and very good. You cook it, you eat it. You draft it, you defend it.”
  - bberenberg 2y ago
    This is not true in my experience. We had our generic contract attorney screw up and then our litigation attorney scolded me for accepting and him for him providing advice on litigation matters where he wasn’t an expert. Lawyers are humans. They make the same mistakes as others humans. Quality of work is variable across skills, education, and if they had a coffee or not that day.
quotemstr 2y ago
> Not worth reading. I would appreciate a version of this paper that is worth reading, FWIW. The paper asks an important question: shame it doesn't answer it.
- standfest 2y ago
  i am currently working on a paper in this field, focusing on the capitalisation of expertise (analogue to marx) in the dynamics of cultural industry (adorno, horkheimer). it integrates the theories of piketty and luhmann. it is rather theoretical, with a focus on the european theories (instead of adorno you could theoretically also reference chomsky). is this something you would be interested in? i can share the link of course
  - itsafarqueue 2y ago
    Yes please
  - thrance 2y ago
    Be careful, barely mentioning Marx, Chomsky or Picketty is a thoughtcrime in the new US. Many will shut themselves down to not have to engage with what you are saying.
addicted 2y ago
Your criticism is completely pointless. I’m not sure what your expectation is, but even your claim about the assumption the paper makes is incorrect. For one thing, the paper assumes that the amount that will be transferred from the human lawyer to the AI lawyer would be $500 + the productivity gains brought by AI, so more than 100%. But that is irrelevant to the actual paper. You can apply whatever multiplier you want as long as the assumption that human labor will be replaced by AI labor holds true. Because the actual nature of the future is irrelevant to the question the paper is answering. The question the paper is answering is what impact such expectations of the future would have on today’s economy (limited to modeling the interest rate). Such a future need not arrive or even be possible as long as there is an expectation it may happen. And future papers can model different variations on those expectations (so, for example, some may model that 20% of labor in the future will still be human, etc). The important point as far as the paper is concerned is that the expectations of AI replacing human labor and some percentage of the wealth that was going to the human labor now accrues to the owner of the AI will lead to significant changes to current interest rates. This is extremely useful and valuable information to model.
- mechagodzilla 2y ago
  The $500 going to the "AI Owner" instead of labor (i.e. the human lawyer) is the productivity gain though, right? And if that was such a productivity gain (i.e. the marginal cost was basically 0 to the AI owner, instead of, say, $499 in electricity and hardware), the usual outcome is that the cost for such a product/service basically gets driven to 0, and the benefit from productivity actually gets distributed to the clients that would have paid the lawyer (who suddenly get much cheaper legal services), rather than the owner of the 'AI lawyer.' We seem pretty likely to be headed towards a future where AI-provided services have almost no value/pricing power, and just become super low margin businesses. Look at all of the nearly-identical 'frontier' LLMs right now, for a great example.
  - larodi 2y ago
    Indeed, fair chance AI only amplifies certain sector's wages, but the 100% automated work will not get any magic margin. Not more than say smart trading to have too many people focus there.
pizza 2y ago
This almost surely took place somewhere in the past week alone, just with a lawyer being the mediating human face.

geysersam 2y ago

> zero sum nature of labor automation Labor automation is not zero sum. This statement alone makes me sceptical of the conclusions in the article. With sufficiently advanced AI we might not have to do any work. That would be fantastic and extraordinarily valuable. How we allocate the value produced by the automation is a separate question. Our current system would probably not be able to allocate the value produced by such automation efficiently.

hartator 2y ago

Yeah, and this applies to every technology ever. You can even use the same argument line against the wheel, electricity, or farming.

tim333 2y ago

I agree that quote seems wrong. When tech reduces the cost of providing a service, the price of the service to consumers is generally driven down correspondingly by competition rather than the service provider getting rich. The whole AI will cause interest rates to shoot up thing seems a bit mad.

pessimizer 2y ago

> The paper examines a world people will pay an AI lawyer $500 to write a document instead of paying a human lawyer $500 to write a document. That will never happen. It's an absurd assumption made by AI investors everywhere. They can't handle a world where everyone already has an AI lawyer at home that they trust, that they have because they once paid $100 for it at a kiosk in the mall or pirated it. The real future is an AI lawyer on your keychain and an extreme devaluation of the skill of knowing the law and making legal arguments. Instead, we're going to have a weirder world where you show up to court and the court already has a list of your best legal arguments that they generated completely independent of you, and they largely match the list of arguments that your own AI advisor app gave you. They'll send you messages regarding your best next steps, and if your own device agrees, all you'll have to do is reply 'Y.' For simple document preparation, I'm pretty sure that your phone will be able to handle it, and AI at the point of submission would be able to give you helpful suggestions if the documents were inadequate. LLMs can almost do things of this degree of difficulty reasonably well now. Where will they be (or their successors be) in 10 years? Why do we think they will be as expensive as lawyers, who you have to send to difficult schools for a long time, feed, and flatter?

asdff 2y ago

What like how streaming services were supposed to save you money on cable now everyones subscriptions add up to more than cable? The incentives mean if there is money on the table to be taken it will be taken. If they are paying lawyers $500 an hour there is money for that for an ai. Especially if that company is claiming the ai is the best lawyer ever.

smeeger 2y ago

foolish assumption on your part

kev009 2y ago

That's a bit too simplistic; would a business have paid IBM the same overheads to tabulate and send bills with a computer instead of a pool of billing staff? In business the only justification for machinery and development is that you are somehow reducing overheads. The tech industry gets a bit warped in the pseudo-religious zeal around the how and that's why the investments are so high right now. And to be transparent I'm very bearish on what we are being marketed to as "AI"; I see value in the techs flying underneath this banner and it will certainly change white collar jobs but there's endless childish and comical hubris in the space from the fans, engineers, and oligarchs jockeying to control the space and narratives.

gopalv 2y ago

> The paper examines a world people will pay an AI lawyer $500 to write a document instead of paying a human lawyer $500 to write a document Is your theory that the next week there will be an AI lawyer that charges only 400$, then it is a race to the bottom? There is a proven way to avoid a race to the bottom for wages, which is what a trade union does - a union by acting as one controls a large supply of labour to keep wages high. Replace that with a company and prices, it could very well be that a handful of companies could keep prices high by having a seller's market where everyone avoids a race to the bottom by incidentally making similar pricing calls (or flat out illegally doing it).

WithinReason 2y ago
You would need to coordinate across thousands of companies across the entire planet
- rvense 2y ago
  That seems unlikely - law is very much tied to a place.
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    Yes, but legal documents don't necessarily need to be drafted by lawyers accredited in that locale. It usually helps though because they are familiar with the local law and other processes.
echelon 2y ago
> There is a proven way to avoid a race to the bottom for wages, which is what a trade union does US automotive, labor, and manufacturing unions couldn't remain competitive against developing economies, and the jobs moved overseas. In the last few years, after US film workers went on strike and renegotiated their contracts, film production companies had the genius idea to start moving productions overseas and hire local crews. Only talent gets flown in. What stops unions from ossifying, becoming too expensive, and getting replaced on the international labor market?

riku_iki 2y ago

> people will pay an AI lawyer $500 to write a document instead of paying a human lawyer $500 to write a document. there will be caste of high-tech lawyers very soon which will be able to handle many times more volume of work thanks to AI, and many other lawyers will lose their jobs.

6510 2y ago
This is how it has always been. Automation makes a job require less traditionally required knowledge, the tasks less complicated and increases productivity. This introduces new complexity that machines can't solve. The funny part is that people think we will run out of things to do. Most people never hire a lawyer because they are much to expensive.
petesergeant 2y ago
Yes, that is obvious. The point you are replying to is that oversupply will mean the cost to the consumer will fall dramatically too, rather than the AI owner capturing all of the previous value.
- riku_iki 2y ago
  It depends. If there will be one/few winners on the market, they will dictate price after human labor out-competed through the price or quality.
  - jezzabeel 2y ago
    If prices are determined by scarcity then the cost of services will more likely be tied to the price for energy.
sgt101 2y ago
I know one ! She's got international experience and connections but moved to a small town. She was a magic circle partner years ago. Now she has a FTTP connection and has picked up a bunch of contracts that she can deliver on with AI. She underbid some big firms on these because their business model was traditional rates, and hers is her cost * x (she didn't say but >1.0 I think) Basically she uses AI for document processing (discovery) and drafting. Then treats it as the output of associates and puts the polish on herself. She does the client meetings too obviously. I don't think her model will last long - my guess is that there will be a transformation in the next 5 years across the big firms and then she will be out of luck (maybe not at the margin though). She won't care - she'll be on the beach before then.

cgcrob 2y ago

They also forget the economic model that you have to pay $5000 for a real lawyer after the fact to undo the mess you got yourself in by trusting the output of the AI in the first place which made a nuanced mistake that the defending "meat" lawyer picked up in 30 seconds flat. The proponents of AI systems seem to mostly misunderstand what you're paying for really. It's not writing letters.

jjmarr 2y ago
https://www.stimmel-law.com/en/articles/story-4-preprinted-forms-dont-go-trial https://www.stimmel-law.com/en/articles/story-4-preprinted-f... Love this story so much I just posted it. Although it's from an era in which you'd buy CDs and books containing contracts, it's still relevant with "AI". > “No lawyer writes a clause who is not prepared to go to court and defend it. No lawyer writes words and let’s others do the fighting for what they mean and how they must be interpreted. We find that forces the attorneys to be very, very, very careful in verbiage and drafting. It makes them very serious and very good. You cook it, you eat it. You draft it, you defend it.”
- bberenberg 2y ago
  This is not true in my experience. We had our generic contract attorney screw up and then our litigation attorney scolded me for accepting and him for him providing advice on litigation matters where he wasn’t an expert. Lawyers are humans. They make the same mistakes as others humans. Quality of work is variable across skills, education, and if they had a coffee or not that day.

quotemstr 2y ago

> Not worth reading. I would appreciate a version of this paper that is worth reading, FWIW. The paper asks an important question: shame it doesn't answer it.

standfest 2y ago
i am currently working on a paper in this field, focusing on the capitalisation of expertise (analogue to marx) in the dynamics of cultural industry (adorno, horkheimer). it integrates the theories of piketty and luhmann. it is rather theoretical, with a focus on the european theories (instead of adorno you could theoretically also reference chomsky). is this something you would be interested in? i can share the link of course
- itsafarqueue 2y ago
  Yes please
- thrance 2y ago
  Be careful, barely mentioning Marx, Chomsky or Picketty is a thoughtcrime in the new US. Many will shut themselves down to not have to engage with what you are saying.

addicted 2y ago

Your criticism is completely pointless. I’m not sure what your expectation is, but even your claim about the assumption the paper makes is incorrect. For one thing, the paper assumes that the amount that will be transferred from the human lawyer to the AI lawyer would be $500 + the productivity gains brought by AI, so more than 100%. But that is irrelevant to the actual paper. You can apply whatever multiplier you want as long as the assumption that human labor will be replaced by AI labor holds true. Because the actual nature of the future is irrelevant to the question the paper is answering. The question the paper is answering is what impact such expectations of the future would have on today’s economy (limited to modeling the interest rate). Such a future need not arrive or even be possible as long as there is an expectation it may happen. And future papers can model different variations on those expectations (so, for example, some may model that 20% of labor in the future will still be human, etc). The important point as far as the paper is concerned is that the expectations of AI replacing human labor and some percentage of the wealth that was going to the human labor now accrues to the owner of the AI will lead to significant changes to current interest rates. This is extremely useful and valuable information to model.

mechagodzilla 2y ago
The $500 going to the "AI Owner" instead of labor (i.e. the human lawyer) is the productivity gain though, right? And if that was such a productivity gain (i.e. the marginal cost was basically 0 to the AI owner, instead of, say, $499 in electricity and hardware), the usual outcome is that the cost for such a product/service basically gets driven to 0, and the benefit from productivity actually gets distributed to the clients that would have paid the lawyer (who suddenly get much cheaper legal services), rather than the owner of the 'AI lawyer.' We seem pretty likely to be headed towards a future where AI-provided services have almost no value/pricing power, and just become super low margin businesses. Look at all of the nearly-identical 'frontier' LLMs right now, for a great example.
- larodi 2y ago
  Indeed, fair chance AI only amplifies certain sector's wages, but the 100% automated work will not get any magic margin. Not more than say smart trading to have too many people focus there.

pizza 2y ago

This almost surely took place somewhere in the past week alone, just with a lawyer being the mediating human face.