Extract from Vito DeStefano’s article “Artificial Intelligence and the End of the World”
I have been going about the state of New York for many months advocating for the expanded use of AI in the legal profession, with an emphasis on the intersection of AI with the Rules of Professional Conduct and the Rules Governing Judicial Conduct. My confidence in the power and utility of AI is so great that I even developed a course at St. John’s University School of Law entitled “Selected Topics in Law and Technology: AI and Ethics.” The idea for this course began with the notion that with so much attention being given to the misuse of AI by attorneys, and all the ethical pitfalls occasioned by such misuse, one could also reasonably argue that attorneys might someday be ethically required to use AI. I stand by this opinion and continue to believe that AI will be enormously beneficial to litigants, lawyers, and judges.
Notwithstanding, and for all the actual and potential benefits of AI in the legal profession and beyond—including increasing workplace efficiency and work quality and enhancing “access to justice”—there is also significant danger posed by the use of AI—far more, in fact, than the harms typically commented on, such as hallucinations, biases, sycophancy, and so forth. Rather, the danger I am speaking of might even be called “existential”—not in the dystopian sense so often depicted in popular science fiction—with sentient computers destroying their “inferior” human creators—but in the actual self- and societal destruction that will arise from ceding over to AI the tools, skills, abilities, and drive which have led to every single human achievement that ever was or will be. In short, the use of AI threatens to dull contemplation, critical thinking, and the inclination to struggle with artistic and intellectual ideas—the very essence of creativity, ingenuity, and achievement. (Yes, inspiration is important, but as Picasso once said, “it must find you working.”)
