Artificial intelligence + generative AI

Artificial intelligence + generative AI

By STERLING MILLER

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

"Star Trek" (TV Series 1966-1969)

Some of the best scenes in the television show Star Trek, the original version, are those involving the crew members usually Mr Spock asking

the computer a question and the computer spitting out the answer in the form of a conversation. When I was younger, I thought this was utterly amazing, and, of course, I wanted my computer that would “answer” any question I cared to ask

This was around the time when typewriters and dinosaurs ruled the Earth, and the first calculators addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division only were coming on the market So, needless to say, a computer that could talk and interact with people was just a notion in a science fiction story back then

I also remember the first time you could access the internet, send an email, stream music, wirelessly connect to a printer, use Webex or Teams to collaborate and the time when Zoom made video conferencing as easy as clicking a button Before this, setting up a video conference call took several hours, several folks from IT, and several years of your life as the technology inevitably failed, wasting a ton of time and effort

There was so much friction in setting up a video conference in those days; I am surprised no one burst into flames trying.

Yes, I’m a bit creaky and have been around awhile, but I am pleased to say that I have never been a “get off my lawn” type of person regarding technology On the contrary, I have always embraced it, believing that technology can help lawyers do more, do it better, and do it at a lower cost Never has this been truer than it is now in 2024

Many of you probably first heard of ChatGPT in late 2022 or early 2023

Unless you have been living on the moon for the past nine months or so, ChatGPT has come to dominate headlines Not only in the business world generally with changing how people do their jobs but also in the world of legal services where, for perhaps the first time, people are starting to ask if lawyers can survive this technological tsunami

What is artificial intelligence?

The term “artificial intelligence” can be a bit misleading, at least when it comes to application in the legal field We’re not talking about some type of walking and talking robot from the “Terminator” movies with a briefcase and bowtie although that would be awesome No, artificial intelligence is an umbrella term to describe technologies that rely on data to make decisions For purposes of the legal work, a better description and one that has caught on is “cognitive computing”

Cognitive computing uses AI systems that simulate human thought to solve problems using neural networks, machine learning, deep learning, natural-language processing, speech and object recognition, and other technology Cognitive tools are trained versus programmed learning how to complete tasks traditionally done by people, where the focus is looking for patterns in data, testing the data, and finding and providing results AI is basically automating tasks Cognitive computing is a step ahead; it’s about augmenting human capabilities. I think of it as a “research assistant” who can sift through the dreck and tell you what it found Why is this important?

According to Fabio Duarte of Exploding Topics, 32877 million terabytes of data are created daily In case you’re not up to date on terabytes, that’s

328,770,000,000,000,000,000 bytes every day The ability of any human to review and comprehend that level of data without help is literally the definition of impossible

AI systems that augment our ability to digest such a vast amount of data are now a critical part of our workday, especially for lawyers for example, a Google search or content search on Practical Law ChatGPT and generative AI add a whole new and powerful method of doing this

Legal departments need to embrace the use of AI Legal departments need to be ready for this change and adapt quickly to the use of AI and, more recently, GenAI As business leaders and businesses become adept at using AI and GenAI, they will expect the other members of the C-suite including the general counsel and the legal department to follow suit Thus, it is becoming critical that in-house lawyers get on board the AI and GenAI train or risk getting left at the station In-house lawyers that embrace AI and GenAI will, simply put, become more valuable to the new generation of CEOs and CFOs who are far more comfortable with technology than their predecessors This means that law schools must step up their game and incorporate AI and GenAI into their curriculum

How AI, machine learning, and generative AI work

Most scientists consider the 1956 Dartmouth AI Conference to be the birthplace of AI Despite this early start, AI did not take off until computing power increased and the cost of that computer power and data storage decreased, which is a fairly recent development One estimate is that twenty years ago, a CIO pursuing AI would have spent almost 100% of their budget on the necessary computing power

Today, that same CIO would spend only 10% to 20% of their budget, expecting that cost to continue to decrease

For our purposes, artificial intelligence has evolved in three stages, and understanding this evolution is critical to understanding the power of generative AI

Stage 1 :

Artificial intelligence is a computer mimicking human intelligence. At this stage, it can recommend a song you might like, spot spam emails and move them out of your inbox, and even drive a car AI is about programming machines like computers) that can learn and solve problems like humans do

However, these machines aren't conscious or aware like us they don't have feelings They just use mathematical rules and large amounts of data to simulate human intelligence So, when you talk to Alexa, for example, it's not understanding you the way a person would. It's just analyzing your words quickly and choosing the best response from its vast programming resources

Stage 2 :

On top of general AI came machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence that allows a computer to learn from data without being specifically programmed It's like teaching a computer to play chess At first, the computer doesn't know how to play, but it gets better over time as it gets more and more information or experience For example, you have a big pile of photographs and want to sort them by whether they show a dog or not Before AI, you'd need to sort through all of them yourself

But with the advent of machine learning, computers can learn to do this job In essence, you show the computer thousands of pictures, telling it whether each picture has a dog or doesn't have a dog Over time, the computer learns how to recognise a dog Later, when it sees a new picture, it can predict whether a dog is in it “Predict” is key because the computer isn’t learning like people do; it’s using math and algorithms, hence the ability to predict versus know

Stage 3 :

Now comes generative AI, which is like Picasso in the artificial intelligence world Instead of just learning patterns and making decisions like other versions of AI, GenAI can create new stuff It can write songs, paint pictures, design graphics, or even write stories like a computer dreaming up its own ideas. For example, imagine you teach the computer by showing it hundreds of pictures of cats After learning what cats look like, it can create a new image of a cat that doesn't exist, drawing on what it's learned from all the cat pictures it's seen The same is true for music and, for lawyers, drafting and writing Generative AI is about creating new content or generating new ideas based on patterns learned from millions, if not billions, of examples This ability to create something new is where the giant leap has occurred with GenAI, all made possible by recent breakthroughs in computer processing power

Natural-language processing

On top of these three phases comes the interface that is, how do people and the machine interact? For years, the most common way has been to type information or queries into a computer, press “enter,” and wait for the answer These types of searches have historically run on Boolean logic, or keyword searches, meaning each search is linear and bears no relationship to past or future inquiries With AI and GenAI, that changes as each search becomes part of the learning process, and each search and answer and correction, if necessary makes the machine that much better for the next task

Generative AI use cases for legal tech

With generative AI, you have the basis for the next great leap forward in using AI by legal departments Where initially it was the ability of machines to learn tasks that previously were done by lawyers coupled with the ability of lawyers to extract pertinent information by either typing a query directly or by asking the machine to perform a task with GenAI, the game is truly afoot

Lawyers can ask AI to create things instead of merely retrieving them AI brought the ability to search for concepts, like contract review and analysis for due diligence; to identify changes in the tone of email communications, including looking for code words used to try to disguise the true nature of the conversation; and even crude drafting, that is, the computer understands what needs to be drafted and prepares the document

GenAI takes all of this to another level As we will see, reviewing and responding to redlines; preparing negotiation books, including anticipating the arguments the other side will bring to the table; and preparing summaries of meetings and documents and doing so via different personas you ask the GenAI to adopt are already here Plus, those are just the tip of the generative AI iceberg!

In summary

The capabilities of GenAI take the early promise of AI from the theoretical to the practical, allowing inhouse lawyers to truly deliver better, faster, and cheaper legal services to the company

We have an early look at the potential impact of this new, powerful technology on the legal industry, but how do you use it, what can it do, and does it mean an army of robo-lawyers will take over the profession?

STERLING MILLER, HILGERS GRABEN PLLC

Sterling Miller is currently CEO and Senior Counsel at Hilgers Graben PLLC. He is a three-time General Counsel who spent almost 25 years in-house He has published five books and writes the award-winning legal blog Ten Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel Sterling received his J D , with honours, from Washington University in St Louis