For the past three Monday afternoons, I have been attending an IE seminar on the intersection of law and artificial intelligence. Albeit short, the seminar was all-encompassing in its approach to AI and how it has affected and is going to continue affecting the area of law, both in terms of available regulatory fields but also the profession in itself. I was surprised in many instances by the material presented by the speakers, but the last session was the one that intrigued me the most, as it touched upon a subject I was familiar with but hadn’t fully acknowledged until this day.
We have all heard about how AI is going to ‘steal our jobs’ so much that, at this point, it sounds like a reiteration of the almost comical warning that ‘the robots are going to take over the world.’ It might not be as absolute as that phrase makes it out to be, but one of the main reasons we have come so far as a species is… well, because those robots did take over the world, in a sense.
In the past decades, since the technological revolution, we have made technological leaps and managed to achieve progress in several fields at an exponential rate. In addition, our health standards and available care have developed to the point that we have managed to wipe certain diseases off the face of the Earth. All this, and much more, has been achieved because we have let ourselves be consumed by the gifts of automation.
Automation has been our tireless, caffeine-free assistant for centuries, quietly revolutionizing the way we work. It has long played a pivotal role in advancing productivity, efficiency, and our quality of life by alleviating the burden of most manual labour. From the Industrial Revolution, with innovations like the spinning jenny and the power loom, to Henry Ford’s assembly line in the 20th century, to more recently, Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) streamlining the banking processes, automation has consistently lowered costs, improved precision and safety, and allowed society to focus on innovation rather than repetitive tasks.
Simultaneously, resistance to automation and technology has existed for as long as innovation itself. When the Luddites smashed textile machines in the early 19th century, they weren’t just breaking looms – they were protesting the fear that automation would erase their livelihoods. Even calculators faced skepticism from educators who at the time feared that students would forget basic math. Today, history repeats itself once more, with the critics of AI worrying about job displacement, ethics, and the loss of human creativity. Much like past generations, they fear that mechanization will render many professionals obsolete.
During that class all this was running through my mind but more intensely in the context of my own degree and aspirations in the legal profession. I asked myself:
Why am I pursuing a degree in law when the very tasks I will be asked to perform, at least in my first years after graduation, can be done cheaper and faster by an AI system?
Indeed, contract writing and checking, literature reviews, and other similar tedious tasks formerly performed by paralegals and new recruits in law firms can now be almost entirely completed by AI. Although counterintuitive this can be perceived as a good thing. Think about it: the boring work is given to a machine that will do it cheaper and faster, which means that any new recruits in a law firm will not be destined to look over case briefs in a cubicle forever. It means that in a little while recruiters will consider the personality and conduct of a candidate before hiring them because they will be hiring them for what makes them…human.
I am clearly looking at the glass half-full. Not even that, the glass is overflowing at this point. But it is true. Much like before, technology and automation mastered all those tasks that were repetitive, dangerous, and boring for humans to do, allowing them to focus on their creativity and on aspects of their work that required human sentiment, empathy, and compassion. This is why a doctor can never truly be replaced by a machine: even if the machine accurately diagnoses the patient, it cannot offer him or his relatives emotional support. Artificial Intelligence can – and will – make for an excellent assistant, but it will never hold the title of Doctor. This is the same reason why lawyers cannot be entirely replaced by AI, because the root of their work is inherently human.
AI much like all the technology that has come before it, is based on automation, pattern recognition, and facts. It can make educated guesses and calculations based on what it knows and what has happened before, but it cannot create something out of thin air, take initiative, or be creative. It may come close, maybe too close for comfort, but it will never be able to replace what the human mind, and most importantly, the human heart has to offer.
Featured image provided by Neil Sahota.
