back to article The sharks of AI will attack expensive and scarce workers faster than they eat drivers

Although sixty years old, artificial intelligence remained mostly a curiosity until half a decade ago, when IBM’s Watson trounced the world’s best Jeopardy! players in a televised match. At the time, you might have thought nothing of that - what does a game show matter in the scheme of things? It didn’t stop there. IBM sent …

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  1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

    The AI is not going to kill the real lawyer jobs (the ones which have passed the bar exam and are allowed to argue a case in court).

    Now paralegals, filing clerks, etc - all the small cogs which make a legal shop work are a different story. They do have something to worry about.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Ever heard of WebMD ? Any idea of how many people go there before/in place of seeing a real doctor ?

      I don't, but I Google anything I don't know in most other domains, so I wouldn't be surprised if a fair proportion of people consider WebMD to be their doctor.

      Now, how about someone creates WebLawyer ? How long do you think it will be before people are logged in by the millions to search how to divorce (continuously trending topic), how to write their will, etc ?

      That is what actual lawyers have to fear. Obviously, court cases will continue to exist, but there's a chance that they will be less frequent when the population uses a rather reliable tool to do the gruntwork for them.

      And I'm guessing WebLawyer will probably be more accurate than WebMD, because the margin of subjectivity is much, much smaller when it comes to law.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        "Obviously, court cases will continue to exist, but there's a chance that they will be less frequent when the population uses a rather reliable tool to do the gruntwork for them."

        Maybe in the US with plea bargaining even the innocent will continue to plead guilty. Over here I doubt those who insist on pleading not guilty even when bang to rights will take any more notice of a WebLawyer than they currently do of their barrister.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "Maybe in the US with plea bargaining even the innocent will continue to plead guilty. "

          As they also do in England & Wales due to the mandatory minimum sentencing rules. An innocent person faces many hurdles put in their way by the legal system. At each step protesting their innocence raises the stakes for the cost and sentencing penalty if they lose.

          The police may offer a caution - knowing full well the CPS wouldn't prosecute for that particular "stretching the boundary" case.

          A magistrate depends on his legal advisor as to the letter of the law - but pleading guilty may give a conditional discharge.

          A Crown court depends on an unpredictable jury. Plead guilty because your legal advisers think a jury would be biased against you - and you may get probation. Fight the case and you are facing a prison sentence.

          Take it to an Appeal Court and the costs rise. If you are lucky you establish case law that may help someone else - if their legal team find that ruling. You don't necessarily get your costs refunded.

      2. knarf

        WebMD

        Doctors in the UK are already using a WikiMD as the basis for their consults. This has been mentioned in the reg already.

        1. Ben Liddicott

          Re: WebMD

          Of course doctors did that even before the internet - they just called it a Medical Dictionary.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "And I'm guessing WebLawyer will probably be more accurate than WebMD, because the margin of subjectivity is much, much smaller when it comes to law."

        Really?

        It used to be said of a certain top QC that he earned millions every year from his ability to confuse the Law Lords as to what the law actually meant.

        1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
          Unhappy

          "earned millions every year.." "..confuse the Law Lords as to what the law actually meant."

          Exactly.

          That's why lawyers won't be going away any time soon.

          Nor will judges.

          UK and US judges make "case law" every time they interpret a law or decide one precedent is more applicable than another.

          "I am the law" is not just a line in a comic book. It remains a literal statement of fact.

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Re: "earned millions every year.." "..confuse the Law Lords as to what the law actually meant."

            "That's why lawyers won't be going away any time soon.

            Nor will judges."

            True. And it would take a change in the law to allow AI to present or judge cases. It's quite possible the people who make the laws, who are mainly lawyers, might have a bit of vested interest.

            Anyway, what we are talking about is not AI. It's very clever search algorithms. Or has the definition of AI been dumbed down again?

      4. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        "Now, how about someone creates WebLawyer ? How long do you think it will be before people are logged in by the millions to search how to divorce (continuously trending topic), how to write their will, etc ?"

        http://www.lawdepot.ca <-- this site has functionally been my lawyer for years now. What do you mean "when"?

    2. Ye Gads

      Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

      I think the issue will be for people at the lower levels of the firm. Imagine not having to research judgements or points of law; being able to bring up, for a given case, all points of law that are relevant and all case law that pertains to it in order of importance.

      This is what Watson can do right now.

      I think the issue is that it's not just simple manual process jobs that are at threat from automation, it's the complex process jobs (lawyers, doctors, accountants) that will be under threat.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

      Basic misunderstanding of how AI works. When the decisions are made by a computer it's only the paralegal jobs that will remain.

      1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

        Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

        Basic misunderstanding of how AI works.

        Basic misunderstanding of how the legal system works, especially in countries which do not have a deterministic law system (aka Napoleonic law) - USA, UK and most of Commonwealth.

        You have on average at least 5 possible ways to argue a point in court. Some of them are contradictory too. The AI can dig up the points of law and precedents, prepare you the alternative arguments and do all the preparatory work. This is what paralegals, clerks, trainees and junior partners do in a law firm.

        You still need a human to chose out of these 5 strategies which one to apply as this depends on jury, judge and god knows what else. This is what determines a good experienced lawyer - he does not just argue the points of law (a graduate can do it). He also determines which ones to raise and which ones to skim over for this particular court - it is not just "law" - it is also strategy in a "game" which involves dealing with humans based on a guesswork assumption of the way they will perceive an argument.

        We are still decades away from an AI being able to do that as this means AI being able to assess human emotions and predict them (something tough even for humans).

        1. M7S

          Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

          "as this depends on jury, judge and god knows what else"

          I believe that there's been a recent comparison of judgements made by an AI that shadowed a real court, something like 79% accuracy and of course the fleshies don't get it right all the time (thus causing the need for Courts of Appeal and the like). Presumably this percentage will go up as programming improves, so you could end up with a system that is entirely automated at the processing/disposal stage.

          There have been utopias and dystopias written about this from Mega City One (already mentioned by some other commentards) to the Culture novels. My main fear for any such system would be the ability to manipulate this once it has gained broad public acceptance, as I recall one R. Blake and his brief found in "The Way Back"

        2. Kubla Cant

          Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

          You have on average at least 5 possible ways to argue a point in court. Some of them are contradictory too.

          Very true. There's another important difference between the AI process and that followed by the doctor or lawyer or other professional. AI works with the corpus of information provided as input, whereas the professionals are in a position to search out new information.

          I haven't used WebMD, but I'd be surprised if it isn't at least partially driven by some kind of input form. This means the designer is constraining the knowledge domain before the AI even gets a look-in.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

            "I haven't used WebMD, but I'd be surprised if it isn't at least partially driven by some kind of input form."

            Just a google search will work if a reference site is covering defined symptoms.

            Last week I had a lump in my palm - almost certainly from over-exercising. A quick search and it is clear that it is a "ganglion cyst" - only needing medical attention if painful and very persistent.

            A persistent pain in my shoulder and biceps on extreme movements. Doctor says "gentle exercise". The web agrees - adding that age-related shoulder joint wear and tear is relieved by strengthening the muscles.

            My doctor is a firm believer in patients using the web to research the condition he has diagnosed - so that they become "experts" in their own case.

            1. Edward Ashford

              Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

              >>> My doctor is a firm believer in patients using the web to research the condition he has diagnosed - so that they become "experts" in their own case.

              Yes, but I bet like mine he isn't a fan of people who diagnose themselves using Google.

              Start with "flu-like symptoms"... now is that AIDS, Meningitis, Eastern Equine Encephalopathy... my God! I must be dead already!

              It's been coming a long time. Here's a Very Bad Poem wot I wrote in 1993 (in a mock Folk singing style to the rhythm of the bicycle pedals going round)

              Robots - or the Engineer's Revenge

              EMA 21-FEB-2023

              I was a jolly engineer

              In nineteen ninety three,

              But now a robot does my job

              There's no more work for me.

              The clean and shiny robots

              Were the population's choice,

              For engineers remind them

              Of the acid rain and noise.

              A robot does my laundry,

              And another cleans my plates,

              One more decides to pay me,

              And one decides my fate.

              There's robots in the factory,

              And robots that are toys.

              There's even robots making,

              Little robot girls and boys.

              The engineer takes tea-breaks,

              but the robot never shirks;

              For homo sapiente,

              But cyborg only works.

              But we have had the last laugh,

              Though it took ten thousand days;

              We built a thinking robot

              - and it wanted to be paid!

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

          suggest you read about the machine learning programme developed by UCL and University of Sheffiled universities that already predicts 79% of ECHR torture cases correctly .. not just processing case law but making more "moral" judgements too ... much of the run of the mill lawyering such as conveyancing, contract disputes, probate etc is already starting to be eaten at by AI

        4. strum

          Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

          "You still need a human to chose out of these 5 strategies which one to apply as this depends on jury, judge and ...." ....the AIjuror.

          If the senior partner in Sue, Grabbit and Runne gets that far, so can the senior partner in the opposing firm. And, in between them, a judicial AI tosses a digital coin and pronounces one of them a winner (and depletes the appeals process in 3 microseconds).

        5. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
          Joke

          Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

          "You still need a human to chose out of these 5 strategies which one to apply as this depends on jury, judge and god knows what else."

          You seem to be assuming that the even more expensive judge won't be the first one replaced by an AI.

        6. Bob Dole (tm)

          Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

          >>You still need a human to chose out of these 5 strategies which one to apply as this depends on jury, judge and god knows what else. This is what determines a good experienced lawyer - he does not just argue the points of law (a graduate can do it).

          When the AI can read the facebook, twitter, etc of the judge and jurors then it'll be able to make recommendations as to the approach to take in that particular setting. Given the ability to sift through large amounts of data quickly - it will likely be far better at picking those approaches.

        7. Cris E

          Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

          Huge slabs of "law" are not court cases. Most of it is contracts and estate and divorce and real estate and all sorts of stuff that isn't going to go to court. That stuff, most of it, is pretty process and rule bound and ripe for pre-processing by an AI.

          And even a lot of the stuff that might go to trial can be looked over for a recommendation. For example, in the US, the insurance company side of personal injury cases are almost always settled by formula to avoid scary payouts by jury, or by the plaintiff to avoid a lot of messy costs that would diminish profits and introduce risks. Regardless it's in everyone's interest to settle rather than risk no money or way too much.

          There's always going to be need for experienced attorneys to assess risk and read juries and counsel people, but most law is just talking to prospective clients to choose cases or rote pounding of the main highways of legal process. That leaves plenty for AI to do in support of lawyers.

      2. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

        Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

        Basic misunderstanding of how AI works. When the decisions are made by a computer it's only the paralegal jobs that will remain.

        I wish you the very best of luck in teaching an AI to interpret law!

    4. Stretch

      Basic misunderstanding how AI works

      The AIs will ace the exams. Eventually no one will want a meatsack to represent them. Much better than have a decent AI that won't rip you off.

      1. oxfordmale78

        Re: Basic misunderstanding how AI works

        Until the AI learns to rip you off too:-)

    5. kmac499

      Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

      And a basic misunderstanding of how the public sees law firms. Once a Watson backed practice can operate at a fraction the cost of a Carter-Fuck (tm Private Eye) firm and starts winning.who is going to hire the extremely Fat-Cat lawyers..

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

        "Once a Watson backed practice can operate at a fraction the cost of a Carter-Fuck (tm Private Eye) firm and starts winning."

        I do not think you understand how the law works.

    6. Naselus

      Re: Basic misunderstanding how law firm works

      Screw that, the article begins with a basic misunderstanding of how history works and then gets everything else wrong from there.

      AI will replace the easiest jobs first, because it's easier to write the AI for them. In fact, it already has in many places; if we take AI to be a simple chain of actions which may vary by input then we're been replacing the 'dumb' jobs with it for a couple of hundred years already. Far from AI replacing jobs 'from the top down', it's been working it's way up for so long that people like Mark Pesce have ceased to even recognize that low-end automation used to be done by hand. The genuinely hard jobs? Those are the creative leaps required to do real research (original research, not just 'let's make this existing thing smaller), or to come to a political compromise between hundreds of competing interests using wildly different value systems.

      If doctors and lawyers have things to worry about, it's only because we've been able to get a robot to answer the phone or build a car for 30 years already.

      There's a reason why many of the high-paying jobs in the world come under the term 'liberal arts'. They're arts. Consider the job of the editor, for example - it's not just reading text and correcting typos. The editor's job extends to determining the political line of the paper, which changes over time and by issue and adjusts depending on the market buying the paper; it involves a great deal of social networking and negotiation and just downright human interaction which is not going to be AI-ified until we have something that passes the Turing test.

      IT doesn't 'owe it to the world' to create new jobs for people because we took the old ones away. That's not really our problem. We created tools that have produced conditions of unprecedented wealth and plenty. The matter of how the fruits of that are distributed have never really been in our hands; mostly because Economics is the science of doing that. Most of the world's present problems are down to the epic failure of that discipline, and we can't automate them away either.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    When no-one has a job because it's been replaced by a machine...

    ...where's the money for the 1%?

    Will the human workforce be forced to scratch out a barely fed existance as slave labour doing menial tasks for the wealthy.

    Zero hour contracts, piece work,no guarantee of a living wage, child poverty...

    Sounds like we are already there.

    1. Charles 9

      Re: When no-one has a job because it's been replaced by a machine...

      Amongst themselves is the answer. They'll close off their walled garden, hash it out amongst themselves, and leave the redundant proliteriat to the wolves.

      1. thegroucho

        Re: When no-one has a job because it's been replaced by a machine...

        If you have no job how can you pay the AI lawyer or AI doctor?

        Buy an iThing?

        There needs to be some sort of income for the unwashed masses (yours truly included) in order to be able to continue selling them services and goods produced by AI workers.

        1. Charles 9

          Re: When no-one has a job because it's been replaced by a machine...

          "If you have no job how can you pay the AI lawyer or AI doctor?"

          They don't. They die off, leaving all the rest who can pay. At some point, like any tournament, the time comes to cut out the losers. The 1% may well be at a point where they can just ignore the masses and hash the rest out amongst themselves.

          1. Naselus

            Re: When no-one has a job because it's been replaced by a machine...

            "The 1% may well be at a point where they can just ignore the masses and hash the rest out amongst themselves."

            Almost certain someone in the French court was saying that exact thing in 1788. You don't 'ignore the masses and hash it out yourself', because then the masses notice how many of them there are compared to you... and then they kill you and take your stuff. Avoiding that happening is more or less the hard work of being an elite; you need to figure out exactly how much you can skim off the top before everyone decides to just get rid of you.

  3. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Learning to live

    > Education needs to become a constant part of our diet: real education,

    To what end?

    As the article points out, "education" or more precisely: vocational qualifications have failed some professions already and are increasingly likely to be a lost bet in terms of time taken and money spent, verses lifetime monetary returns. So what will be the point of education, when anything and everything that an education confers can be made available from an AI or automated / robotic source?

    In that respect, professionals are facing the same problems that airline pilots have. So much of a flight is run by the autopilot that many real pilots, while having 000's of hours in the big chair, have little clue what to do during an emergency and need constant refreshers to keep their edge.

    What will be the state of professions in, say, 50 years when there are no more human lawyers, surgeons, teachers or actors. No more drivers, shop assistants, bank staff or administrators? Will it matter that having an IQ above 85 becomes a liability since you can question the reason for your existence, but have no means for self-improvement? And with no opportunities to improve ourselves or earn a bean, where will future innovations and progress come from?

    1. Hasham

      Re: Learning to live

      Excellent point. If machines can be educated faster than humans, what is the point of the newly unemployed re-training for other work? Education will have to take on a different purpose than a road to employment.

    2. Charles 9

      Re: Learning to live

      But machines still lack dexterity, fine motor skills, so things like surgery, construction, other positions that require contorted or delicate physical labor on site are still pretty safe. Same for jobs that require a face like certain retail, hotels, etc because of Uncanny Valley.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Learning to live

        "But machines still lack dexterity, fine motor skills, so things like surgery, [...]"

        Surgeons are already using IT assistance in retina microsurgery. Work too delicate for the unaided human eye and hand.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Learning to live

        @Charles 9; You're deluding yourself if you think that it's not going to be possible for AI to overcome the problem of fine motor skills sooner rather than later as well.

        And do you think that the uncanny valley's never going to be overcome? Not that there will be as wide a need for such people anyway if all the wealth is in the hands of the 1% and the rest of us have gone to hell.

      3. The Mole

        Re: Learning to live

        "But machines still lack dexterity, fine motor skills"

        No they don't, machines can be made to do any physical task that humans can do, generally faster and more accurately. Humans currently have the advantage in cost, size, and energy density/recharging and adaptability, the first three will definitely disappear and the last is basically what this article is about.

        "Same for jobs that require a face like certain retail, hotels, etc because of Uncanny Valley."

        Numerous places have already started trialing robots checking in guests etc, people adapt to the new normal removing and children will be trained out of Uncanny Valley as it will just be normal - in the same way talking to a customer agent robot online has become more routine.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Learning to live

          Re: fine motor skills...

          Machines also have the benefits in surgical processes of being able to use narrower "limbs" and joints able to spin on their axis unlike human ones. They also don't suffer from shakes (even minute ones - think about the eye surgery example above) or errors in judgement of geospatial location.

          1. Charles 9

            Re: Learning to live

            "Machines also have the benefits in surgical processes of being able to use narrower "limbs" and joints able to spin on their axis unlike human ones. They also don't suffer from shakes (even minute ones - think about the eye surgery example above) or errors in judgement of geospatial location."

            But what if the patient moves? Can the robo-surgeon correct for Murphy moments as easily as the human can (and the human may even do it instinctively, something the machine lacks and can't be taught it since we don't know how our own instincts came to be--they come untaught)?

            1. Filippo Silver badge

              Re: But what if the patient moves?

              The answer is yes, they can correct for patient movements, faster and more accurately than the human.

        2. Charles 9

          Re: Learning to live

          "in the same way talking to a customer agent robot online has become more routine."

          And too many people (including young people, BTW), still respond to this by pressing 0 and demanding to speak to a live person. And Uncanny Valley is an instinctive (meaning untaught) aversion to pseudo-humans because something about them isn't perfectly right. So young people will still get creeped out by Unacnny Valley. That's why we still have the Turing Test, which gets tougher the more elements you have to incorporate. Turing Test with text is within reach, but then you have the voice and finally the look.

      4. Edward Ashford

        Re: Learning to live

        >>> But machines still lack dexterity, fine motor skills,

        Ermmm... have you seen those things that let a surgeon in Chicago operate on a patient in Manchester?

        Google remote surgery

        1. Cris E

          Re: Learning to live

          Regarding remote surgery, it clearly looks the the future, but I always thought it a funny proposition that a hospital or clinic that had enough technology to have the fancy remote robot surgical gear would not be large or affluent enough to have surgeons on hand.

          Clearly at some point the gear will be cheaper or easier to maintain at remote sites than a person, but it could be a while. The types of places without surgeons that have this kind of money are pretty limited (maybe Antarctica, space, remote mining or drilling stations, etc.) Poor or sparsely populated places like Indian reservations in South Dakota or the interior of Australia certainly make sense for this but are going to have to wait for it to become cheap.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Learning to live

      Vocational education rarely keeps up with fast-moving changes. The people running courses tend to live off the fat of when they were practical leaders in a field.

      I remember when a highly regarded university's IT professor gave a talk. In the Q&A session it turned out he was unaware of FPGA technology - which we were already using to improve the performance/cost of leading edge products.

      The only way you learn fast enough in those situations is to do it yourself.

      Of course AI might take over the compiling and provision of courses too.

    4. quxinot

      Re: Learning to live

      >in, say, 50 years when there are no more human lawyers,<

      Stop teasing.

    5. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

      Re: Learning to live

      The article more-or-less states that we need to earn our keep by joining an impossible rat-race with AI, but maybe by that time we must learn to use the free time we will have gained. We must unlearn treadmill habits, and indeed learn to live. Ultimately, we may have to learn to actually pay attention to our fellow humans, to care for one another, to be good companions, and no, "your plastic pall who's fun to be with" is no replacement

      Utopian? Perhaps, but a man may dream

  4. Andrew Commons

    Two points.

    First, this relies on the Internet which can be taken away at any time because the technology it is built on is not up to the job. The temptation/motivation to take it away will only be increased by this sort of shift. You would have to be mad....oh.

    Second, you can always change the economics...don't pay them as much!

    1. Charles 9

      Re: Two points.

      Problem is machines distort the market because they don't have to be paid, plus their long-term costs tend to be less than the equivalent in humans (and machines have a multiplier in their favor).

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