Will AI summarization disrupt discovery? Almost certainly. Is that a good thing? Not necessarily, according to Craig Ball.

Craig’s latest blog post titled (wait for it!) Will AI Summarization Disrupt Discovery?, discusses how Reader’s Digest, the century-old magazine with the highest paid circulation, has long published “condensed” books; anthologies of four-to-five popular novels abridged to fit in a single volume.  Condensed Books were once enormously popular, with tens of millions of copies in circulation. 

They were also “an abomination to serious readers, a literary Tang for those who preferred fresh-squeezed OJ”, according to Craig (if you’re in the US, not an astronaut and too young to remember Tang, click here). Craig also said: “I’ve never read a condensed book, so I’m in no position to judge their merit save to say that I believe reading anything is a good thing.  I imagine the condensed versions conveyed the guts of the story well enough to sound like you’d read it over drinks with the neighbors before the Ed Sullivan show (if you’re too young to remember the Ed Sullivan show, click here). 😉

Craig says he’s “enough of a purist (okay, ‘snob’) to worry about the impact of summarization. So, I worry when the tech industry touts the value of AI summarization of documents, especially as a means of speeding identification and review of evidence in discovery.  I question whether the “Reader’s Digest Condensed Evidence” will convey the same tone, nuance and detail that characterize responsive productions.  Will distillation be made of distillations until genuine intelligence is lost altogether?”

Mind you, Craig is not a technophobe. As he notes: “Technology is my lifelong passion.” But he goes on to discuss some of the concerns he has regarding AI summarization and how developments like this will change the phrase “just, speedy and inexpensive”. I won’t steal his thunder – check out his post here!

So, what do you think? Will AI summarization disrupt discovery? And is that a good thing? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using GPT-4’s Image Creator Powered by DALL-E, using the term “robot reading a condensed book”.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.