‘Artificial intelligence is not a narrative of humans versus machine. Rather, it is the problem versus human and machine.’
Technological advancements have led to improvements in efficiency in several spheres of daily life, ranging from virtual courts, to online businesses, online education, among others. Over the course of the previous 30 years, technology has altered the way we analyze, create, access or store information. The modern world is rapidly evolving. We no longer live in a time when nearly everything was done by hand. In the modern world, a large portion of daily tasks are handled by machines, software, and other automated devices. Currently, a major contribution to the world evolution is Artificial Intelligence (AI).
What is AI?
AI is a combination of the words ‘artificial’ and ‘intelligence’. The word ‘artificial’ is commonly associated with terms such as synthetic, factitious, and unnatural. An artificial object is one that has been created or assembled by humans, typically with the intention of seeming natural. Intelligence, on the other hand, is the capacity for comprehension, as well as the act or reality of intellectually grasping something.
Therefore, Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to when computer systems are designed to mimic human cognitive abilities. It specifically involves an aspect referred to as machine learning, which entails algorithms that identify patterns in data and use those newly discovered patterns to automate specific operations. For instance, the system created to play Go (AlphaGo) defeated the world champion five games to zero after being taught on over 30 million moves and discovering moves that even Go specialists could not have predicted.
In recent years, Artificial Intelligence technology has become widely used in numerous fields from medicine to architecture to engineering, among others to eliminate human labour and achieve faster and more efficient results, even including the legal profession. However, with the expansion of Artificial Intelligence, there is looming concern that it will slowly by slowly take over the legal profession.
A Boon or a Bane for the legal profession?
Regardless of the area of practice, a significant portion of lawyers’ work includes written communication ranging from emails, memos, court pleadings, discovery, and transactional documentation. Time savings is by far AI’s biggest and most obvious benefit. In a small fraction of the time, PC frameworks can analyse more data more thoroughly than humans can. With AI, lawyers are now able to identify gaps or deficiencies in reports and even legal investigations more quickly thanks to automated archive evaluation and association. For example, contract inspection software, can identify omitted phrases or meanings in familiar types of agreements as a result of its learning from repetitive investigations.
Furthermore, compiling and revising documents, as well as conducting legal research, can be tedious and potentially demoralizing tasks. Even though these tasks must be completed in a competent and moral manner, allowing programming to complete the initial round of ‘hard work’ reduces stress and fatigue. AI frees up lawyers’ time as well as mental capacity for higher-level work by providing the time resources for automated audit, research, and archive quality control. This enhances creativity, allowing lawyers to give particular weight and focus entirely on the tasks that computers are unable to perform. Consequently, lawyers now have greater confidence in the results as they realize their AI arrangement has successfully completed a comprehensive audit. This enables them to go into the creative, academic analysis that computers, no matter how intelligent, are unable to duplicate. These items combined significantly increase lawyers’ satisfaction with their jobs.
Although AI has its fair share of advantages in the legal profession, its impact may be overstated. In actuality, experts are quite concerned about the shortcomings that provide corporations a false sense of security.
Since artificial intelligence technology is still developing, there is a greater likelihood of mistakes and flaws in the work produced if unskilled professionals are using and working with the technology.
Furthermore, numerous unskilled legal professionals are predicted to be produced by Artificial Intelligence. Creating and reviewing documents is the primary responsibility of staff at a law firms. The current arrangement, if you call it that, is that machines are currently being used to run low-skill, routine jobs while human expertise dominates high-skill, complicated tasks. However, if an AI system is capable of completing a task flawlessly in a matter of seconds, isn’t there a likelihood that some professions in a law firm setting may become redundant?
Suffice to say, while certain regular routine jobs might disappear, new ones will always appear. The demand for legal assistance may possibly rise as a result of liability concerns around AI technologies. There are negative impacts AI can have in the legal profession. One cannot argue with the fact that computers are designed to execute a huge amount of instructions at tremendous speeds which in most instance may be difficult for human beings. In the end, computers do exactly what they are told and an argument can be made that they incapable of independent thought outside the programmed parameters. In a legal setting, this raising the question of liability. AI systems are designed to collect data or information from various sources. Some of these sources may be accurate but there also room for manipulation and misinformation. This became a reality in 2023, when a New York-based lawyer was fined after he misused the AI chatbot, ChatGPT, to conduct research on case he was handling. The chatbot produced cases that were made up and were far removed from what the lawyer was pleading in his case. The lawyer relied on what ChatGPT has produced, and filed his brief in court. As an AI system cannot be sued or stand trial for breach of professional ethics or codes of the legal profession, it stands to be seen how a lawyer would defend him in the instance where disciplinary proceedings are instituted against him as result of blind reliance on inaccurate information produced by a form of AI.
This article is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as a legal opinion. If you have any queries or need clarifications, please do not hesitate to contact Gregory Makambo, Partner, (gmakambo@makambolaw.com), Chelsea Mukhebi, (cmukhebi@makambolaw.com) or your usual contact at our firm, for legal advice.