And, if so, how worried should we be? That’s the topic of a new article in Judicature regarding benefits and dangers for AI in the courts!

In the article AI in the Courts: How Worried Should We Be? (available here), Judicature asked Maura R. Grossman, a professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo; Paul W. Grimm, a retired federal judge and the David F. Levi Professor of the Practice of Law and Director of the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School (which publishes Judicature); and Cary Coglianese, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law and director of the Penn Program on Regulation, to discuss the pros and cons of AI in the legal space as we enter this brave new world.

Topics discussed include:

• Whether the interview participants are generally more positive or more negative about AI’s potential impact, especially on the legal system.
• Potentially exciting access-to-justice possibilities, including the potential for AI lawyers and AI judges.
• Whether courts should be using ChatGPT and, if so, how.
• Whether judges should be able to rely on black-box algorithmic risk-assessment tools for decision-making and the importance of explainability.
• Whether the use of large language models to assist law students with their written work, faculty in preparing scholarly works for publication, and junior associates in preparing pleadings should be prohibited.
• The AI trends, promises, or pitfalls judges should focus on.

Grimm and Grossman provided joint responses to each of the questions, while Coglianese provided his own responses.

While AI’s tremendous potential is discussed throughout, the strong caveats and concerns are discussed as much, if not more. Here’s a portion of the response from Grimm/Grossman to the first question that illustrates those caveats and concerns:

“We are most concerned about the ills we can already see, such as biased data and algorithms leading to discriminatory outcomes and greater inequality; the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation, which will threaten our judicial system, if not our entire democracy; increased crime and fraud as a result of easily created and hard-to-detect deepfakes; and increased threats to personal privacy through the accumulation of massive amounts of personal information in the hands of a few, unregulated big-tech companies with unabashedly selfish commercial interests.”

Gee, is that all? 😉

Grimm and Grossman did precede that comment with a statement that they are “enthusiastic about AI’s many potential positive benefits”, so it’s not all dire concerns. Nonetheless, it’s a terrific article that gets into a lot of the considerations (both good and bad) for AI in the legal community, and especially AI in the courts. Check it out here!

So, what do you think? How worried are you about some of the caveats of AI in the courts? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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.