ChatGPT - the death of Attorneys?

A new OpenAI initiative called ChatGPT was released last week, and more than 1 million users signed up within the first five days. Some say it might even replace Google Search. But what exactly is ChatGPT and will it replace attorneys?

WHAT IS CHATGPT?

When asked this question by Cheryl Kahla from The Citizen, the AI bot itself responded:

“ChatGPT is a state-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP) model developed by OpenAI. It is a variant of the GPT-3 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 3) model that is specifically designed for conversational AI applications.

“ChatGPT is able to generate human-like text in response to input from a user, allowing it to engage in natural language conversations on a wide range of topics.

“Unlike traditional chatbots, which are limited to pre-defined responses, ChatGPT can generate responses in real-time based on the input it receives, allowing for more flexible and dynamic conversations.”

Yet the AI at the core of ChatGPT is not, in fact, very new. It is a version of an AI Model called GPT-3?that generates text based on patterns it digested from huge quantities of text gathered from the web. ChatGPT stands out because it can take a naturally phrased question and answer it using a new variant of GPT-3, called GPT-3.5. This tweak has unlocked a new capacity to respond to all kinds of questions, giving the powerful AI model a compelling new interface just about anyone can use.

WHY COULD SUCH AI BE A THREAT TO ATTORNEYS?

Rather alarmingly for attorneys, ChatGPT has already passed a practice Bar Exam! Scoring 70%. In addition, according to Legal Cheek,?ChatGPT can successfully answer questions on the Watson Glaser Test. For the uninitiated, Watson Glaser is the critical thinking assessment favoured by large law firms as a way weaning down hopefuls during the highly-competitive recruitment process.

Christopher Potts, a professor at Stanford University, says the method used to help ChatGPT answer questions, seems like a significant step forward in helping AI handle language in a way that is more relatable. “It’s extremely impressive,” Potts says, despite the fact that he thinks it may make his job more complicated. “It has got me thinking about what I’m going to do on my courses that require short answers on assignments,” Potts says.

According to a Reuters article by Jenna Greene: "Suffolk University Law School Dean Andrew Perlman set what could be a speed record for writing a 14-page law article: One hour. Or rather, I should say co-wrote -- he shared the byline with OpenAI's new chatbot. Published earlier this week by the Social Science Research Network, their tretise?strikes me as equal parts fascinating and alarming – and points to potentially profound changes ahead for the legal profession. “I’ve always enjoyed technology and been interested in the role it can play in the delivery of legal services,” Perlman told me. When he heard about ChatGPT, he said, he was quick to try it out -- and was “blown away, as so many people are.” The technology offers “significant potential to address access to justice questions” in making legal services available to people of limited means, Perlman noted. “It’s all correct,” he said, adding that what the bot produced was more lucid than some writing he's seen from real-live practitioners."

WHY IS CHATGPT NOT AN IMMEDIATE THREAT TO ATTORNEYS?

Here’s the thing, the bot creators on the OpenAI website themselves note that ChatGPT shouldn’t be relied upon for advice, and that it “sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers.” If a lawyer did that, there could be malpractice consequences -- but if the bot steers you wrong, too bad.

Over the past couple of years, OpenAI and others have shown that AI algorithms trained on huge amounts of images or text can be capable of impressive feats. But because they mimic human-made images and text in a purely statistical way, rather than actually learning how the world works, such programs are also prone to?making up facts?and?regurgitating hateful statements and biases—problems still present in ChatGPT. Early users of the system have found that the service will happily fabricate convincing-looking nonsense on a given subject.?

Nathan-Ross Adams lists the following legal risks posed by AI Lawyers:

• Intellectual property - ChatGPT is trained on a vast amount of text data. If this training data includes copyrighted works, then ChatGPT’s outputs may potentially infringe on the copyrights of those works.
• Bias and discrimination - Another legal risk of ChatGPT is that it could generate offensive or defamatory content. It does not have the same ability to understand the context or implications of the words it generates.
• Data protection - ChatGPT also has the ability to share personal data potentially breaching most of the world’s data protection laws.
• Fake news and misleading content - As already mentioned above, ChatGPT has the ability to produce very "convincing nonsense".

RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

The biggest delay in implementing change "improvement" in the Legal Profession, are the Lawyers themselves and this will probably be the case again in the adoption of AI. Mark A. Cohen wrote an excellent article in Forbes Magazine titled Law's Delayed Future, that brilliantly examines the lawyer's mindset and resistance to change.

He says: "To achieve the elevated expectations of business, the legal function must undergo a mindset change. Legal must function as an integrated team internally and with its supply chain. Then, it must integrate, with other business units that have already begun their digital journey. That transition requires the legal function to replace its insular lawyer-dominated, narrow “legal” role with a far broader, business and customer-oriented, multi-disciplinary, cross-functional one. The transition requires a holistic, end-to-end re-imagination of the legal function?from the enterprise, end-user, and societal perspectives."

CONCLUSION

The business imperative is there for Attorneys and Law Firms to be "early adopters" of relevant technology to meet "the elevated expectations of business" and yet the vast majority of Attorneys remain resistant to change and slow to embrace Tech. The consensus of opinion seems to be that due to requirement of a "human touch" in understanding nuance and context, Attorneys will not immediately be replaced by AI such as ChatGPT but watch this space! Maybe, I am an "outlier" in the legal profession, but I believe that Legal Tech should be embraced and not resisted, just the same as our human qualities as Attorneys (i.e. people) should be embraced and not suppressed. Maybe it's just the Star Wars loving kid in me?

Gareth Shepperson ([email protected])

Stegmanns Inc