Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
US Supreme Court issues AI warning
IN ITS 2023 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary, US Chief Justice John G Roberts jr honed in on the pros and cons of using Artificial Intelligence in the legal system.
Roberts stated that AI will be beneficial to those who cannot afford an actual lawyer and can tackle “basic questions”.
However, he noted that humans are “fairer” than machines, which he dubbed “just, speedy, and inexpensive”.
He explained: “In criminal cases, the use of AI in assessing flight risk, recidivism, and other largely discretionary decisions that involve predictions has generated concerns about due process, reliability, and potential bias.
“At least at present, studies show a persistent public perception of a ‘human-AI fairness gap,' reflecting the view that human adjudications, for all of their flaws, are fairer than whatever the machine spits out.”
JULIA HOBSBAWM
EVERY end-of-year working assumption is the same: next year will be different. This is the eternal optimism of business and the never-ending story of innovation. But this time it's true, certainly when it comes to workplace technology. All sorts of incredible things will be possible at your desk (wherever your desk is), but it will come with a price: possibly the steepest learning curve in knowledge work since the word processor way back in the analogue age of the 1970s.
ChatGPT's arrival a year ago has captured the collective imagination with 100 million users per week, according to its creator, OpenAI. Workers got a taste of what it's like to ask AI tools to write their emails and summarise documents for them, but in the year ahead these tools will only get more sophisticated and be able to respond to images, voice commands, and potentially carry out more complex tasks with limited human intervention. That has the potential to radically change the day-to-day experience of work.
But, as Roy Bahat, head of Bloomberg Beta, which has invested in artificial intelligence since 2014, told a recent conference, “it's pretty confusing”. That said, he's adamant that AI tools are a career necessity, telling me on my podcast: “Just like when computers were first introduced, skills went on a résumé. Saying today you are proficient in AI is a skill.”