Recent items that have advanced our thinking re GenAI.

In November 2022, ChatGPT burst onto the scene and rapidly recalibrated expectations about the facility of computers with natural language inputs and outputs. AI, and, more specifically, GenAI has dominated the collective conversation ever since.

Few of us possess actual understanding of how modern technology works at a schematic/mechanical level. Rather, while we never quite grasp how it works, we become comfortable once we know that it works.

Instead of forever moving the goalposts by defining AI as “whatever the machine can’t do yet,” it merits tracking what GenAI and cannot do today, as well as what it might be capable of tomorrow.

The speed at which developments in GenAI have shifted expectations and priorities within large non-tech businesses is astounding. But discussions always frontruns decision and dollars. Real resource allocation is the trend to track.

Big Tech Pivots to GenAI - Because it intersects with their own commercial interest, Big Tech has been the first mover on investing in and incorporating GenAI.

Lawyers must contend with the GenAI revolution on several fronts.

SALI (Standards Advancement for the Legal Industry) is a mission-critical initiative. SALI has LexFusion’s unqualified support. Our industry has held itself back with a Tower-of-Babel-like approach to language.

If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. GenAI keeps moving and the regulations are a comin.

Even without new regulations, GenAI has triggered many existing legal frameworks.

Privacy is central to the GenAI conversation. But, in many respects, it is really just a subset of broader concerns over data security.

It is not merely copyrights and patents that are threatened by the rapid rise of GenAI. Personal privacy was a hot issue long before the GenAI companies became so thirsty for data. GenAI has turned the temperature up several notches.

One specialty aspect of data security with which lawyers are rightly concerned is GenAI’s effect on privilege.

Intellectual Property

Does GenAI violate copyrights? Can a work produced using GenAI be copyrighted? Can AI invent? At present, there are more questions than answers in the quagmire that is the legion of IP issues surrounding GenAI.

Protecting workers is likely to be an active area for GenAI related regulations, investigations, and lawsuits.

Many are worried that GenAI will take jobs. It probably will.

The gold rush is on. Yet intermittent investment manias are par for the course. How long will this one last? Magnitude, duration, and impact remain key points of interest.

Consultants ♡ GenAI Since 2022, LexFusion’s consistent message to law departments, and, by extension, law firms, re GenAI is:

Finance is often the canary in the coalmine as to whether a new form of tech will take. The early returns suggest that finance is serious about GenAI.

Understandably, there is considerable focus on how GenAI may impact business. Who is making the money and how they are making it.

GenAI could substantially alter what we teach the next generation. It could also substantially transform how we teach.

GenAI is premised on new kinds of models. Large Language Models (“LLMs”) have been the most prominent.

One critical debate is whether the future of GenAI models is primarily open source.

Responsible AI is an approach to developing artificial intelligence ethically. The goal is AI that is safe, trustworthy, and legal compliant. Responsible AI increase transparencies and mitigates harms like AI bias.*

The models underpinning GenAI are probabilistic, not deterministic. Being models, they produce answers without regard for whether the answers are true (just statistically likely).

The models underpinning GenAI—like GPT-4 (OpenAI), Gemini (Google), and Llama 2 (Meta)—are often referred to as “foundation models.”

Knowledge Management, Graphs, and Retrieval Augmented Generation. There is an odd sentiment in some quarters that GenAI renders knowledge management obsolete.

“Literally everyone on earth will die.”*
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Every technological inflection point underdelivers in the near term and fails to fulfill the wild promises of its most zealous prophets.

Some of what is to come is downright bizarre.

A few more educational resources