Last week famed physicist Stephen Hawking made the headlines by stating (during a Reddit AMA) that:
“If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.”
There has been a lot of discourse lately on whether the legal profession is susceptible to automation (mainly in the forms of cognitive computing, and/or using already mature technologies to commodify more repetitive legal tasks). As of today it has been touted that machine intelligence has the IQ of about a four year old, which more specifically while it is superhuman in many respect in narrow application (chess, trivia) it is still severely lacking in in terms of “general” intelligence. It is my belief however, that is Moore’s law on transistor density holds (or is transcended by some other technology such as 3D processors and/or quantum computing). We may see a rise of general intelligence (either through the allowance of whole brain emulation on these machines or through some other ground-breaking algorithm).
In the meantime there is great interest in leveraging the power of information technology to make legal services more accurate and affordable. This efficiency aspect which you can argue is a big reason for automation of production and services in general has some interesting implications for the whole legal institution of society.
What if in the near future, we see a legal services world which is mostly dominated by a superior business model (which will almost certainly level technology)? Think of it as a mashup between the dominance of the Windows operating system and Uber. It will be popular for the sake of affordability and efficiency. While there may be a few competitors, legal services and information interpretation will be provided by entities privately controlled by a few people (versus the rest of the population).
Law in society is necessary for providing order and safety for everyone. It can be as vital as water, food, and shelter in modern civilization. What worries me is that the ability to access it may end up being concentrated in the hands of the few. Echoing the above quote from Prof. Hawking, there is always a chance. I believe that these technologies can greatly enhance humanity’s quality of life, with law of course being one aspect. But we must tread carefully with foresight aimed towards everyone’s benefit.
Just some food for thought.
Also if you wondering why used a picture of an Owl for the header, it is a reference to the “The Unfinished Fable of the Sparrows” from Nick Bostrom’s 2014 book SuperIntelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Please see this lovely video for a summary.
Very interesting post Alex!
I have to admit that it gives me a “creepy” feeling when picturing legal services controlled by a handful of people and the unequal distribution of power that would entail. I think it helps that this outcome has been one of the many predictions involved with the intervention of technology in the legal field and that the legal community would want to avoid such an end.