AI is impacting law and policy issues as both a tool and a subject area. Advances in AI provide tools for carrying out legal work in business and government, and the use of AI in all parts of society is creating new demands and challenges for the legal profession.
Lawyers and AI Tools
In a recent study, “20 top US corporate lawyers with decades of experience in corporate law and contract review were pitted against an AI. Their task was to spot issues in five Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), which are a contractual basis for most business deals.” The LawGeex AI system attempted correct identification of basic legal principles in contracts The results suggest that AI systems can produce higher accuracy in shorter times compared to lawyers. As with other areas of AI applications, issues include trust in automation to make skilled legal decisions, safety in using AI systems, and impacts on the workforce of the future. For legal work, AI systems potentially reduce the time needed for high-volume and low-risk contracts and give lawyers more time to work on less mundane work. Policies should focus on automation where possible and safe, and the AI for legal work is another example of the need for collaborative roles for human and AI systems.
AI Impact on Litigation
The other side of tools and content is the emerging litigation in all parts of society from the use of AI. Understanding the nature of adaptive AI systems can be crucial for fact-finders and difficult to explain to non-experts. Smart policymaking needs to make clear the liability issues and ethics in cases involving the use of AI technology. Artificial Intelligence and the Role of Expert Witnesses in AI Litigation by Dani Alexis Ryskamp, writing for The Expert Institute, discusses artificial intelligence in civil claims and the role of expert witnesses in elucidating the complexities of the technology in the context of litigation. “Over the past few decades, everything from motor vehicles to household appliances has become more complex and, in many cases, artificial intelligence only adds to that complexity. For end-users of AI products, determining what went wrong and whose negligence was responsible can be bafflingly complex. Experts retained in AI cases typically come from fields like computer or mechanical engineering, information systems, data analysis, robotics, and programming. They may specialize in questions surrounding hardware, software, 3D-printing, biomechanics, Bayesian logic, e-commerce, or other disciplines. The European Commission recently considered the question of whether to give legal status to certain robots. One of the issues weighed in the decision involved legal liability: if an AI-based robot or system, acting autonomously, injures a person, who is liable?”