Extract from Cary Coglianese, Maura R. Grossman and Paul W. Grimm’s article “AI in the Courts: How Worried Should We Be?
As we enter 2024, it’s tough not to think of 2023 as “the year of artificial intelligence.” After all, last year saw the wide dissemination of ChatGPT (launched at the end of November 2022 by OpenAI), a free-to-use, large language model chatbot built to generate dialogue in response to human inquiry.1
Unlike our old friend Google, a construct of 1998 that seems quaint by comparison, ChatGPT does not provide a list of results based on a web search. Instead, as a form of generative AI, it provides answers to prompts by drawing from knowledge through machine learning, or the process by which computers learn from examples.2 The result is textual, human-like answers that are often detailed and context-specific.3 ChatGPT can produce essays, poems, computer code,4 and — yes — contracts, legal briefs, and a host of other documents relevant to the legal community.5
The legal industry, like many others, spent 2023 in a flurry of reactive activity: Law schools amended honor codes to address AI-assisted learning,6 judges issued standing orders on AI-assisted briefing,7 and lawyers wondered how to harness the new power to research legal issues and even brainstorm strategy.8
So, where are we in 2024? We 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.
