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walkandtalkk t1_j5ozn6s wrote

Not the good ones.

One day, perhaps scarily soon, AI will be able to go through so many computations that it can mimic the human brain. I think that will be a disaster for humans and will lead to a massive loss of trust as people have no clue whether the person on the other end of the call, text, or email is human or not. It will be far worse than the lack of trust we experience online today. My theory is that people will return to phone calls and in-person meetings, simply to have some confidence in the veracity of their communications.

But law will be one of the last things to be taken over by the Borg. At least in the United States and other countries that use common-law systems or flexible civil-law systems. That's because, at least in the U.S. and other countries that derive their legal systems from England, the laws are often written in relatively general terms.

For instance (this is a hypothetical), there might be a law that criminalizes assault with a deadly weapon, but it might not define what "deadly" means. That leaves it to the judge to figure out, and it can involve a lot of clever lawyering by the parties to argue what counts as a deadly weapon. Is it a weapon that is usually deadly? Always deadly when used as a weapon? "Reasonably likely to be deadly"? Courts in the U.S. are often given the task of figuring those questions out and then setting a precedent that lower courts have to follow.

In short, laws are often not highly technical and rigid. Some are—I'd say AI can tell if you're speeding—but others aren't. Even with that speeding ticket, what if you were speeding to avoid a mass-shooter? What if you jaywalked to avoid a fight between two people on the street? Or someone having a mental breakdown, even if they were not, at that instant, threatening you?

There's a lot of complex reasoning in the law. A lot of it requires an understanding of the social context in which people operate. Other cases involve debates over what the Constitution's authors meant, or whether we should care what they meant if we think the text of the document is clear.

AI is not yet ready to have those debates. It may be able to contest whether you were speeding, but it's not ready for the court of appeals.*

*But it could probably win in the Supreme Court by repeating the phrase "abortion hurts women too."

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awe778 t1_j5rzxa4 wrote

> But law will be one of the last things to be taken over by the Borg.

We said that about art, and look where things are going.

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