Thammasat University students interested in law, sustainable development, business, economics, future studies, media and communication, urban planning, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 17 June Zoom webinar on Future-proofing Businesses with AI, Proactive Law and Clear Communication.
The event, on Monday, 17 June 2024 at 5:15pm Bangkok time, is presented by the Department of Accounting & Business Law, Aalto University, Finland and the JARGONFREE Research Group of Tampere University, Finland.
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of law and artificial intelligence (AI).
Students are invited to register at this link:
https://forms.office.com/e/CDm2zqJAEm
The event announcement notes:
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into various aspects of business promises to redefine the landscape of business law.
This forward-looking seminar, co-organized by Aalto University School of Business’s Business Law and Tampere University’s JARGONFREE Research Group, will explore how we can use technology to decentralize law and make it more ‘decent’ (just, efficient, accessible and inclusive), and how we can achieve sustainability goals by applying a proactive approach and clear communication.
The speakers will include:
Samuel Becher, a Professor at the Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Gerlinde Berger-Walliser, an Associate Professor of Business Law at the University of Connecticut School of Business, the United States of America.
Anne Ketola, a linguist who specializes in cognitive accessibility and plain language.
Perttu Isohanni, a doctoral researcher at Aalto University.
For further information or with any questions, please write to
petra.hietanen-kunwald@aalto.fi
Last year, Professor Becher coauthored an article, LexOptima: The Promise of AI-Enabled Legal Systems for the University of Toronto Law Journal. Its abstract:
Emerging technological developments, such as advancements in machine learning, natural language processing, predictive analytics and new and emerging methods in artificial intelligence, are poised to significantly transform legal systems. These technologies are already enhancing the predictability of litigation outcomes and beginning to automate aspects of legal research and adjudication processes. Current legal systems, however, are not ready to leverage these developments optimally and to distribute their benefits equitably. This article critically examines the potential for a new AI-enabled legal model we call LexOptima. LexOptima is characterized by its use of decentralized, community-driven data and algorithms to generate—in real-time—context-aware law and personalized legal services. LexOptima has the potential to radically improve access to justice, reduce bias in legal processes, empower communities to play a greater role in the creation and development of law and policy, and increase efficiency in legal institutions. However, the transition to such a model also faces significant challenges, including issues of data privacy, resistance by incumbent interests, algorithmic transparency, and the need for robust human oversight. Drawing upon an interdisciplinary analysis of relevant literature and technological trends, we provide a conceptual framework for LexOptima and explore its potential benefits and limitations. We conclude by proposing key considerations and next steps for a dynamic, human-centered approach to legal system transformation that optimally and inclusively leverages the strengths of humans and AI-enabled technologies.
From the introduction:
Current legal systems are ill-equipped to optimally leverage the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI). Our legal systems and institutions often struggle to provide affordable access to justice. Worldwide, estimates suggest that over a billion people have unmet civil or administrative justice needs, and countless others are excluded from opportunities that the law provides. A significant number of people do not seek legal advice to understand or resolve their problems, with a large proportion reporting severe difficulties investing the necessary funds to address their legal issues.
The complexity of the law, coupled with the high costs and time-consuming nature of legal processes, can create significant barriers for individuals seeking justice. The inability of many to navigate the legal system effectively leads to a sense of frustration and disillusionment and can result in severe delays and tragic outcomes. More generally, as society becomes increasingly digitized and globalized, traditional legal frameworks and institutions are wrestling with novel challenges, such as regulating emerging technologies, protecting digital rights, and resolving cross-border disputes. Overall, our systems wrestle to keep pace with society’s rapidly evolving needs and account for the increasing complexity of legal issues in the modern world.
In this article, we reimagine our legal systems and institutions and explore how we can better position them to fully harness the potential of new technologies and address these challenges.
To that end, we envisage a new, AI-enabled model of law—we dub it ‘LexOptima’—capable of leveraging the power of technology to foster greater citizen participation, inclusivity, efficiency, and trust. In doing so, we aim to ride, not resist, the technological wave already challenging our legal systems and offer a fresh perspective on the promise and perils of what we see as an inevitable transformation.
Recently, new AI tools such as multimodal large language models (LLMs) have taken the world by storm, making ChatGPT the fastest-growing consumer application in history.
Sophisticated AI applications, capable of generating human-like text and images, composing music, and allowing users to effortlessly process the entire internet, have surprised a world underprepared for their appearance. The innovation and capabilities such tools bring have sparked a newfound fascination around technology and its potential impact in various fields.
In the legal domain, the widespread advancements in artificial intelligence are rapidly beginning to affect legal systems, practices, and institutions.
However intriguing, current AI tools are just the thin edge of the wedge. Tech companies like OpenAI strive to develop powerful and safe artificial general intelligence (AGI) to realize unprecedented scientific and technological breakthroughs. By 2030, technologies like GPT-4 will probably be regarded as ancient history and seem quaintly obsolete. Given the speed at which technology advances, we will likely witness in the foreseeable future new AI systems that combine diverse capabilities far beyond our current understanding. Current AI systems will develop into technologies that interoperate with and govern virtually everything in our lives, and humans will frequently and seamlessly interact with numerous AI agents and applications […]
From the concluding remarks:
[A]n AI-enabled legal system is both a phenomenon and a technological development with far-reaching implications. With proper anticipation and planning, such a system could advance legal harmony, facilitate access to justice, democratize the law, dramatically reduce court caseload, optimize the use of scarce resources, and enhance law-making and enforcement efforts. After all, the envisaged system will borrow from both common law and civil law systems—and others besides. While neither the common law nor the civil law system was designed to accommodate and leverage new technological capabilities, the proposed system can evolve and adapt to human needs, just as the common law evolves through the practice of precedent. As for civil law, the tradition of codification and viewing law more as science—rather than art—with its propensity towards consolidation of principles, rigorous deduction, and the pursuit of one correct answer, may lend itself to automation.
Indeed, an AI-enhanced legal system can transcend common law and civil law systems by borrowing from and developing insights from the precedents of common law and embracing and elaborating upon the principles informing the codified structure of civil law. It can engender a future where law is highly specified and dynamically responsive, not constrained by the traditional paradigms of either system. That said, LexOptima is not a panacea. Whereas its potential is exciting, it also demands careful consideration, gradual progress, multi- stakeholder discourse, and ethical stewardship.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)