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Alphonse Pfarti
Alphonse Pfarti
1 year ago

Once again, we’re back to Betteridge’s Law. To be fair, the author acknowledges this.

In my own professional area, I keep hearing that we’ll soon be replaced by robots. Been hearing this for a long time. Still have a job. Several systems that can apparently process complex, semantic information better than humans have come and gone; and they went because they were rubbish compared to a well-trained human. On the other hand, a good algorithm can cut through vast amounts of busy-work. I keep making the point that cutting out mindless, repetitive tasks in order to free up your expensive human staff is the way forward – AI should be your tool, rather than your master.

Phillip Arundel
Phillip Arundel
1 year ago

The Polish Army had a million horse mounted soldiers when Germany invaded – none had lost their jobs till than, and after – well, none still did that.

It is not a gradual process.

Alphonse Pfarti
Alphonse Pfarti
1 year ago

The situation of Polish cavalry is a flawed analogy. Horseback cavalry had been redundant since the invention of armoured cavalry and reinforced concrete defences more than 20 years previously. Poland had chosen not to modernise and was subsequently vulnerable. My experience of evaluating recent technological advancements and finding that (in some cases) the vendors promised far more than they delivered is a different experience. A better comparison would be that we were promised jet-packs and holidays on the Moon, but instead got Twitter.

Last edited 1 year ago by Alphonse Pfarti
Alphonse Pfarti
Alphonse Pfarti
1 year ago

The situation of Polish cavalry is a flawed analogy. Horseback cavalry had been redundant since the invention of armoured cavalry and reinforced concrete defences more than 20 years previously. Poland had chosen not to modernise and was subsequently vulnerable. My experience of evaluating recent technological advancements and finding that (in some cases) the vendors promised far more than they delivered is a different experience. A better comparison would be that we were promised jet-packs and holidays on the Moon, but instead got Twitter.

Last edited 1 year ago by Alphonse Pfarti
Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
1 year ago

The people who work on this stuff are acting like the goal of human life is to eliminate humans.

Alphonse Pfarti
Alphonse Pfarti
1 year ago

I think you’re more or less right about that.

Alphonse Pfarti
Alphonse Pfarti
1 year ago

I think you’re more or less right about that.

Phillip Arundel
Phillip Arundel
1 year ago

The Polish Army had a million horse mounted soldiers when Germany invaded – none had lost their jobs till than, and after – well, none still did that.

It is not a gradual process.

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
1 year ago

The people who work on this stuff are acting like the goal of human life is to eliminate humans.

Alphonse Pfarti
Alphonse Pfarti
1 year ago

Once again, we’re back to Betteridge’s Law. To be fair, the author acknowledges this.

In my own professional area, I keep hearing that we’ll soon be replaced by robots. Been hearing this for a long time. Still have a job. Several systems that can apparently process complex, semantic information better than humans have come and gone; and they went because they were rubbish compared to a well-trained human. On the other hand, a good algorithm can cut through vast amounts of busy-work. I keep making the point that cutting out mindless, repetitive tasks in order to free up your expensive human staff is the way forward – AI should be your tool, rather than your master.

Andrew Buckley
Andrew Buckley
1 year ago

My first thought on this was around liability. A lawyer puts her/his name to a case or documents. There is a trail to liability when problems occur.
With a ChatBot where does liability lie? Insurance would be an interesting issue for the developer/owner/seller.

Andrew Buckley
Andrew Buckley
1 year ago

My first thought on this was around liability. A lawyer puts her/his name to a case or documents. There is a trail to liability when problems occur.
With a ChatBot where does liability lie? Insurance would be an interesting issue for the developer/owner/seller.

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
1 year ago

I got a chat bot spam phone call the other day. Sounded very human. They only way I could tell was that there were some odd ambient background noise shifts between responses and slight timing irregularities. The inflection was amazingly good. It was responding reasonably to my answers but the give away was it was also responding reasonably to my insults.
I need one of these AI to handle these calls for me. Now, there’s a product that would sell.

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
1 year ago

I got a chat bot spam phone call the other day. Sounded very human. They only way I could tell was that there were some odd ambient background noise shifts between responses and slight timing irregularities. The inflection was amazingly good. It was responding reasonably to my answers but the give away was it was also responding reasonably to my insults.
I need one of these AI to handle these calls for me. Now, there’s a product that would sell.

R Wright
R Wright
1 year ago

Good luck to the first tranche of lawyers willing to risk the ire of the regulators when this all ends in tears. People get struck off for putting money in the wrong bank account, let alone giving a chatbot control over a case.

R Wright
R Wright
1 year ago

Good luck to the first tranche of lawyers willing to risk the ire of the regulators when this all ends in tears. People get struck off for putting money in the wrong bank account, let alone giving a chatbot control over a case.

Saul D
Saul D
1 year ago

Leading to AI based judges enforcing AI produced law. Are we to be defended, prosecuted and judged by machines…? How would we appeal?

Andrew Buckley
Andrew Buckley
1 year ago
Reply to  Saul D

Well, if the bot is Android based then an Apple app will be used for the appeal and vice versa!

Andrew Buckley
Andrew Buckley
1 year ago
Reply to  Saul D

Well, if the bot is Android based then an Apple app will be used for the appeal and vice versa!

Saul D
Saul D
1 year ago

Leading to AI based judges enforcing AI produced law. Are we to be defended, prosecuted and judged by machines…? How would we appeal?

David Simpson
David Simpson
1 year ago

Not, I suspect, if lawyers have anything to do with it – they are the ultimate closed shop.

Phillip Arundel
Phillip Arundel
1 year ago
Reply to  David Simpson

Yea, but there is no honour amongst them – so expect this to be the norm in 10 years.

Then your Starbucks Barista can hols a PHd ‘Women’s Studies’ degree, and the till operated by an ex-contract Law Solicitor.

£300,000 of student debt between them, so do not forget to tip……

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
1 year ago
Reply to  David Simpson

They’re probably trying to find the paralegal version of this right now. They can’t find enough paralegals anymore.

Last edited 1 year ago by Jeff Cunningham
Phillip Arundel
Phillip Arundel
1 year ago
Reply to  David Simpson

Yea, but there is no honour amongst them – so expect this to be the norm in 10 years.

Then your Starbucks Barista can hols a PHd ‘Women’s Studies’ degree, and the till operated by an ex-contract Law Solicitor.

£300,000 of student debt between them, so do not forget to tip……

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
1 year ago
Reply to  David Simpson

They’re probably trying to find the paralegal version of this right now. They can’t find enough paralegals anymore.

Last edited 1 year ago by Jeff Cunningham
David Simpson
David Simpson
1 year ago

Not, I suspect, if lawyers have anything to do with it – they are the ultimate closed shop.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago

If your lawyer is Jolyon Maugham then you could replace him with a pedal-bin.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Which Harry could then converse with – he doesn’t need chatbots.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Which Harry could then converse with – he doesn’t need chatbots.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago

If your lawyer is Jolyon Maugham then you could replace him with a pedal-bin.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 year ago

AI could soon replace the family doc. A machine can scan the entire internet for treatments and symptoms etc.

Steve Elliott
Steve Elliott
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

The problem with scanning the entire internet is that there is a lot of lies and misinformation on it. I think that AI will be an important tool to assist doctors in their diagnosis and treatment but not to replace them.

Milton Gibbon
Milton Gibbon
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

I think the point being made is the NHS (or private hospitals) could have a specialist-approved database which would be better than a GP with more patients than they can handle and we wouldn’t have to pay thousands of inflated salaries and pensions. It wouldn’t be checking “the whole internet”, just doing the job of a GP a billion times quicker.

Last edited 1 year ago by Milton Gibbon
Milton Gibbon
Milton Gibbon
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Elliott

I think the point being made is the NHS (or private hospitals) could have a specialist-approved database which would be better than a GP with more patients than they can handle and we wouldn’t have to pay thousands of inflated salaries and pensions. It wouldn’t be checking “the whole internet”, just doing the job of a GP a billion times quicker.

Last edited 1 year ago by Milton Gibbon
Steve Elliott
Steve Elliott
1 year ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

The problem with scanning the entire internet is that there is a lot of lies and misinformation on it. I think that AI will be an important tool to assist doctors in their diagnosis and treatment but not to replace them.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 year ago

AI could soon replace the family doc. A machine can scan the entire internet for treatments and symptoms etc.

Gordon Arta
Gordon Arta
1 year ago

All the staff in the typing pool and telephone exchange assure me this will never happen.

Gordon Arta
Gordon Arta
1 year ago

All the staff in the typing pool and telephone exchange assure me this will never happen.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago

I enjoyed cross-examining ChatGPT on sex and race political questions and inevitably the answers came across as somewhat robotic and any difficult questions were evaded by generalised formula rather than properly addressed so I will not be in a hurry to entrust any legal cases to an AI lawyer until the programs are considerably more sophisticated than they are at present.

Phillip Arundel
Phillip Arundel
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

at the exponential growth in sophistication of these things – no hurry, you have 6 to 10 years yet, till they totally beat the human every time.

Phillip Arundel
Phillip Arundel
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

at the exponential growth in sophistication of these things – no hurry, you have 6 to 10 years yet, till they totally beat the human every time.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago

I enjoyed cross-examining ChatGPT on sex and race political questions and inevitably the answers came across as somewhat robotic and any difficult questions were evaded by generalised formula rather than properly addressed so I will not be in a hurry to entrust any legal cases to an AI lawyer until the programs are considerably more sophisticated than they are at present.

Phillip Arundel
Phillip Arundel
1 year ago

As a lifetime contrarian and rebellious by sheer instinct – what will my IA chatbot equivalent be like?

Or will they all basically agree?

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
1 year ago

It won’t matter because you (and I) won’t be around.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
1 year ago

This is the most important question raised by all this AI nonsense. They will all agree and any contrary thought will fall by the wayside. So there will be no more Eurika! moments, no more flashes of intuition no more artistry. It’s hard to think of a human endevour, from brain surgery to plastering a wall that won’t suffer.
There’s a famous and beautiful bit of Hemingway, the first paragraph of “A Farewell to Arms”; in one short passage, just three or four sentences, he used the word ‘and’ more than a dozen times. Can anyone imagine an AI program that wouldn’t ‘correct’ that ?

Last edited 1 year ago by laurence scaduto
Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
1 year ago

It won’t matter because you (and I) won’t be around.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
1 year ago

This is the most important question raised by all this AI nonsense. They will all agree and any contrary thought will fall by the wayside. So there will be no more Eurika! moments, no more flashes of intuition no more artistry. It’s hard to think of a human endevour, from brain surgery to plastering a wall that won’t suffer.
There’s a famous and beautiful bit of Hemingway, the first paragraph of “A Farewell to Arms”; in one short passage, just three or four sentences, he used the word ‘and’ more than a dozen times. Can anyone imagine an AI program that wouldn’t ‘correct’ that ?

Last edited 1 year ago by laurence scaduto
Phillip Arundel
Phillip Arundel
1 year ago

As a lifetime contrarian and rebellious by sheer instinct – what will my IA chatbot equivalent be like?

Or will they all basically agree?

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
1 year ago

“an AI could pen a more persuasive jury speech”
It would be rather amusing to see a human lawyer and AI compete in such a Turing Test.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
1 year ago

“an AI could pen a more persuasive jury speech”
It would be rather amusing to see a human lawyer and AI compete in such a Turing Test.

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago

ahh yes.. slister Kevin Chatbott in his bri nylon short £18 Tesco suit and pointy corfam lace ups, replete with reound veowel seound estuary accent…. hang on a minute… he is a robot anyway…..

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago

ahh yes.. slister Kevin Chatbott in his bri nylon short £18 Tesco suit and pointy corfam lace ups, replete with reound veowel seound estuary accent…. hang on a minute… he is a robot anyway…..

Erik Hildinger
Erik Hildinger
1 year ago

Chatbots are alarming, but I suggest here one way in which they could be helpful: writing diversity statements. Not only can they be handled in seconds, only accepted views will be expressed. Subversive? Yes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJJEU-BfQR0&t=12s
erikhildinger.com

Milton Gibbon
Milton Gibbon
1 year ago

Very happy I’m not qualifying as a young lawyer right now.