In dinosaur times, a company called Memorex, which started as a computer tape company in the 1960s, had a commercial that dinosaur lawyers will probably remember to this day. The commercial featured Ella Fitzgerald, and if you don’t know who she is, shame on you. Check out some of her recordings on YouTube. There’s never been anyone like her.
In the ad, she sings a note that shatters glass. The note was put on a Memorex audio cassette. (Remember those?) The tape was then played back, and the question was “Is it live, or is it Memorex?” That slogan lasted for two decades (a long time for any ad campaign.)
So, can the same be asked of the difference between actual and artificial intelligence? In other words, is it “live” or is it AI?
In a recent ATL post, Jonathan Wolf commented that rather than just competing with China’s AI, we should promote the development of actual intelligence.
Instead of letting AI do the walking and talking, let’s fire up those neurons and get busy. As Wolf points out, some things are supposed to be hard. In fact, that is why it’s called work and not play. Am I stating the obvious?
Every time I see that pesky AI on my laptop, I want to strangle it. “Leave me alone,” I say. “If I need or want your help, I will ask for it. Until then, go pester somebody else or even better, as my uncle used to say to a troublesome neighborhood kid, ‘Go out and play in traffic.’ Let me choose my own words in my own voice.” (And yes, I did write this column. Please, spare me the snarky comments.)
Does AI lead to lawyer laziness? Does it lead to a loss of critical thinking? Is it too easy for us to let AI do the heavy lifting?
Remember that sanctions exist for lawyer fuzzy thinking or worse, not thinking at all. A recent example of how AI can lead lawyers astray is a pending case in Wyoming, where eight of the nine cited cases in a brief were figments of AI’s vivid and erroneous imagination or should I say hallucinations. Oopsie. To say that the court was displeased is an understatement. (Is it real, or is it AI?) As David Lat points out in his post on this benchslap, it was not just a snafu, but a major screw-up of epic proportions.
The Wyoming district court issued an OSC that ordered at least one of the three attorneys of record to provide copies of the hallucinated (aka cited) cases by this past Monday. The attorneys had to provide sworn declarations as to (using my words, not the court’s) how this screw up happened and each attorney’s role in the motion’s preparation. Sanctions loom.
Is this example carelessness? Laziness? A misplaced trust in AI to get it right? A combination of all three? Whatever. This case reinforces that we can’t allow AI to do our work for us. Didn’t we learn in law school that we needed to not only read the cases we cited, but to make sure they were still good law? And didn’t we also learn that the buck stops with us? (No blaming paralegals or other staff and should we add AI to that list?) We are paid to do the work, not AI.
Are we not preparing future lawyers for a world in which critical thinking is going to become even more important since AI can do the scut work that all of us loathe? (Does anyone actually enjoy propounding written discovery and answering it, usually objecting to most if not all of it?) Critical thinking is essential to every lawyer’s practice and taking the easy way out is not.
It’s not just the gigantic whoopsie in the Wyoming case; consider the possible consequences. How much in sanctions will this FUBAR cost them? What kind of discipline might these lawyers face? Do lawyers think about collateral consequences, not just about what might happen in the case, but down the road? Does professional reputation mean anything any more? Given today’s penchant for over-sharing, does anyone care?
So stipulated that I am an old lady lawyer, but I wonder if Wolf is right, that, “our collective deficit of thinking skills will keep being exploited to the grave detriment of all.” Scary, yes? But in this brave new world, if we don’t have those skills, what do we have? We will not only have lost the battle but also the war. It’s a different kind of arms race, but one even more costly than a conventional one. Coming in second is not where we should want to be.
Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.
The post Actual Versus Artificial Intelligence: A New Kind Of Arms Race? appeared first on Above the Law.
In dinosaur times, a company called Memorex, which started as a computer tape company in the 1960s, had a commercial that dinosaur lawyers will probably remember to this day. The commercial featured Ella Fitzgerald, and if you don’t know who she is, shame on you. Check out some of her recordings on YouTube. There’s never been anyone like her.
In the ad, she sings a note that shatters glass. The note was put on a Memorex audio cassette. (Remember those?) The tape was then played back, and the question was “Is it live, or is it Memorex?” That slogan lasted for two decades (a long time for any ad campaign.)
So, can the same be asked of the difference between actual and artificial intelligence? In other words, is it “live” or is it AI?
In a recent ATL post, Jonathan Wolf commented that rather than just competing with China’s AI, we should promote the development of actual intelligence.
Instead of letting AI do the walking and talking, let’s fire up those neurons and get busy. As Wolf points out, some things are supposed to be hard. In fact, that is why it’s called work and not play. Am I stating the obvious?
Every time I see that pesky AI on my laptop, I want to strangle it. “Leave me alone,” I say. “If I need or want your help, I will ask for it. Until then, go pester somebody else or even better, as my uncle used to say to a troublesome neighborhood kid, ‘Go out and play in traffic.’ Let me choose my own words in my own voice.” (And yes, I did write this column. Please, spare me the snarky comments.)
Does AI lead to lawyer laziness? Does it lead to a loss of critical thinking? Is it too easy for us to let AI do the heavy lifting?
Remember that sanctions exist for lawyer fuzzy thinking or worse, not thinking at all. A recent example of how AI can lead lawyers astray is a pending case in Wyoming, where eight of the nine cited cases in a brief were figments of AI’s vivid and erroneous imagination or should I say hallucinations. Oopsie. To say that the court was displeased is an understatement. (Is it real, or is it AI?) As David Lat points out in his post on this benchslap, it was not just a snafu, but a major screw-up of epic proportions.
The Wyoming district court issued an OSC that ordered at least one of the three attorneys of record to provide copies of the hallucinated (aka cited) cases by this past Monday. The attorneys had to provide sworn declarations as to (using my words, not the court’s) how this screw up happened and each attorney’s role in the motion’s preparation. Sanctions loom.
Is this example carelessness? Laziness? A misplaced trust in AI to get it right? A combination of all three? Whatever. This case reinforces that we can’t allow AI to do our work for us. Didn’t we learn in law school that we needed to not only read the cases we cited, but to make sure they were still good law? And didn’t we also learn that the buck stops with us? (No blaming paralegals or other staff and should we add AI to that list?) We are paid to do the work, not AI.
Are we not preparing future lawyers for a world in which critical thinking is going to become even more important since AI can do the scut work that all of us loathe? (Does anyone actually enjoy propounding written discovery and answering it, usually objecting to most if not all of it?) Critical thinking is essential to every lawyer’s practice and taking the easy way out is not.
It’s not just the gigantic whoopsie in the Wyoming case; consider the possible consequences. How much in sanctions will this FUBAR cost them? What kind of discipline might these lawyers face? Do lawyers think about collateral consequences, not just about what might happen in the case, but down the road? Does professional reputation mean anything any more? Given today’s penchant for over-sharing, does anyone care?
So stipulated that I am an old lady lawyer, but I wonder if Wolf is right, that, “our collective deficit of thinking skills will keep being exploited to the grave detriment of all.” Scary, yes? But in this brave new world, if we don’t have those skills, what do we have? We will not only have lost the battle but also the war. It’s a different kind of arms race, but one even more costly than a conventional one. Coming in second is not where we should want to be.
Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at [email protected].
