Law Commons^™

The Paradox Of Automation As Anti-Bias Intervention, Ifeoma Ajunwa

AI-DR Collection

A received wisdom is that automated decision-making serves as an anti-bias intervention. The conceit is that removing humans from the decision-making process will also eliminate human bias. The paradox, however, is that in some instances, automated decision-making has served to replicate and amplify bias. With a case study of the algorithmic capture of hiring as heuristic device, this Article provides a taxonomy of problematic features associated with algorithmic decision-making as anti-bias intervention and argues that those features are at odds with the fundamental principle of equal opportunity in employment. To examine these problematic features within the context of algorithmic hiring …

Future Work, Jeffrey M. Hirsch

AI-DR Collection

The Industrial Revolution. The Digital Age. These revolutions radically altered the workplace and society. We may be on the cusp of a new era—one that will rival or even surpass these historic disruptions. Technology such as artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality, and cutting-edge monitoring devices are developing at a rapid pace. These technologies have already begun to infiltrate the workplace and will continue to do so at ever increasing speed and breadth.

This Article addresses the impact of these emerging technologies on the workplace of the present and the future. Drawing upon interviews with leading technologists, the Article explains the …

Rise Of The Robot Lawyers?, Milan Markovic

Faculty Scholarship

The advent of artificial intelligence has provoked considerable speculation about the future of the American workforce, including highly educated professionals such as lawyers and doctors. Although most commentators are alarmed by the prospect of intelligent machines displacing millions of workers, this is not so with respect to the legal sector. Media accounts and some legal scholars envision a future where intelligent machines perform the bulk of legal work, and legal services are less expensive and more accessible. This future is purportedly at hand as lawyers struggle to compete with technologically savvy alternative legal service providers.

This Article challenges the notion …

Professional Judgment In An Era Of Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

Though artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare and education now accomplishes diverse tasks, there are two features that tend to unite the information processing behind efforts to substitute it for professionals in these fields: reductionism and functionalism. True believers in substitutive automation tend to model work in human services by reducing the professional role to a set of behaviors initiated by some stimulus, which are intended to accomplish some predetermined goal, or maximize some measure of well-being. However, true professional judgment hinges on a way of knowing the world that is at odds with the epistemology of substitutive automation. Instead of …

Using Ai To Analyze Patent Claim Indefiniteness, Dean Alderucci, Kevin D. Ashley

Articles

In this Article, we describe how to use artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to partially automate a type of legal analysis, determining whether a patent claim satisfies the definiteness requirement. Although fully automating such a high-level cognitive task is well beyond state-of-the-art AI, we show that AI can nevertheless assist the decision maker in making this determination. Specifically, the use of custom AI technology can aid the decision maker by (1) mining patent text to rapidly bring relevant information to the decision maker attention, and (2) suggesting simple inferences that can be drawn from that information.

We begin by summarizing the …

Work Only We Can Do: Professional Responsibility In An Age Of Automation, Sherman J. Clark

Articles

Automation can help us do our work as lawyers; but in the process, it should also force us to be more thoughtful about what our work really is or ought to be.' The challenge for the profession, as I see it, is not simply to survive the advent of new technology, nor even merely to make effective use of new tools. While addressing those immediate concerns, we should also welcome the concomitant opportunity to develop and refine our understanding of what it means to be a good and ethical lawyer. As technological developments free us from and prevent us from …