‘Do large language models (LLMs) know the law? LLMs are increasingly being used to augment legal practice, education, and research, yet their revolutionary potential is threatened by the presence of “hallucinations”—textual output that is not consistent with legal facts. We present the first systematic evidence of these hallucinations in public-facing LLMs, documenting trends across jurisdictions,…

We have added a new section to AI Update. On the ‘Courses‘ page you will find lists of online courses (a large proportion of which are free/free to audit).

‘The increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in inventive processes raises numerous patent law issues, including whether AI can be an inventor under law and who owns the AI-generated inventions. The UK Supreme Court decision in Thaler v Comptroller of Patents, Designs and Trademarks has provided an ultimate answer to this question: AI cannot be an inventor for…

‘Five Canadian law societies have issued guidance for lawyers using generative AI in their practice. The Law Society of Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Ontario offer resources on licensee professional and ethical obligations when utilizing AI. The guidance ranges from a white paper flagging risks practitioners face to practical tips for implementing tools driven…

‘One reason we are sensitive about genAI (generative AI) is because knowledge and language are central to our sense of ourselves and to the institutions which are important to us. Accordingly, application of genAI raises major questions across the cultural, scholarly and civic contexts that are important to libraries. In this context, I like Alison…

‘Looking at his glossy profile picture, online commentators had decided he was computer-generated and the inevitable Twitter pile-on ensued.’ Link: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/reform-uk-ai-candidate-mark-matlock-b2576101.html

‘A fierce legal battle involving the future of generative AI took a fascinating turn last week in a tenacious copyright infringement lawsuit that had been brought by a major publisher against AI maker OpenAI of ChatGPT fame. The specific case entails the New York Times (NYT) seeking a legal bid to score a bullseye on OpenAI for…

‘Michael Stych has co-founded a service offering help with legal questions through a chatbot. He tells Catherine Baksi he wants it to be a force for good.’ Link: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/we-use-ai-to-make-justice-more-accessible-to-ordinary-people-fk78crxtt

‘Many in the information seeking community are excited about the promise of large language models and Generative AI to improve scholarly information access. These models can quickly transform the content of scholarly works in ways that can make them more approachable, digestible, and suitably written for audiences for whom the works may not have been…

‘We introduce the Cambridge Law Corpus (CLC), a corpus for legal AI research. It consists of over 250 000 court cases from the UK. Most cases are from the 21st century, but the corpus includes cases as old as the 16th century. This paper presents the first release of the corpus, containing the raw text…

‘Two critical policy questions will determine the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on the knowledge economy and the creative sector. The first concerns how we think about the training of such models—in particular, whether the creators or owners of the data that are “scraped” (lawfully or unlawfully, with or without permission) should be compensated…

‘Artificial intelligence is an electricity hog. Google says its total greenhouse gas emissions climbed nearly 50% over five years, mostly due to electricity that powers AI data centers.’ Link: https://www.npr.org/2024/07/10/nx-s1-5028558/artificial-intelligences-thirst-for-electricity

‘Long before “generative AI” became a buzz word, the Artificial Inventor Project started a campaign for the reform of patent law. They found a scientist who owned an AI system called “DABUS”, which allegedly conceived of two inventions (a torch and a food container).’ Link: https://www.eversheds-sutherland.com/en/ireland/insights/german-federal-supreme-court-confirms-that-ai-system-cannot-be-named-as-inventor

‘Researchers’ attitudes to AI vary significantly across career stage, subject area, and country. While 76% of researchers say they have used some form of AI tool in their research, our survey uncovered unexpected generational differences and polarised opinions on the impact of AI.’ Link: https://blog.oup.com/2024/07/ai-attitudes-and-behaviour-researcher-profiles-interactive/

‘The launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 led to major controversies about the governance of generative artificial intelligence (AI). This article examines the first international governance and policy initiatives dedicated specifically to generative AI: the G7 Hiroshima process, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development reports, and the UK AI Safety Summit. This analysis is…

‘The regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) should strike a balance between addressing the risks of the technology and its benefits through enabling useful innovation whilst remaining adaptable to evolving risks. The European Union’s (EU) overarching risk-based regulation subjects AI systems across industries to a set of regulatory standards depending on where they fall in the…

‘In Brave New Words, Salman Khan, the visionary behind Khan Academy, explores how artificial intelligence and GPT technology will transform learning, and offers a roadmap for teachers, parents, and students to navigate this exciting – and sometimes intimidating – new world.’ Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fpiH2Yng78

‘It’s hard to avoid the topic of artificial intelligence. Since ChatGPT was introduced in November 2022, AI has infiltrated just about every aspect of human life—and at a pace that is almost impossible to keep up with. Pope Francis recently attended the G7 summit to address global leaders on the perils and promises of AI—the first time…

‘While 2023 was a year of first introductions, testing, and many, many blunders for AI chatbots and other tools, 2024 has seen the release of AI tools of growing sophistication and wider adoption. Big tech companies like Google and Microsoft are upping their game. Startups like Anthropic, Mistral, and OpenAI are continuing their winning streaks, while other contenders such…

‘The Commonwealth Secretary-General, the Rt Hon Patricia Scotland KC, has appointed Prof Richard Susskind OBE KC (Hon) as her Special Envoy for Justice and Artificial Intelligence.’ Link: https://thecommonwealth.org/news/commonwealth-secretary-general-appoints-prof-richard-susskind-special-envoy-justice-and-ai

‘Law clerks and interns for federal Judge Xavier Rodriguez recently spent weeks poring over evidence from a high-profile trial on challenges to Texas’ voting and election laws, and then summarized key testimony for the court’s official findings of fact and conclusions of law.’ Link: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/insurance/law-clerk-vs-ai-courthouse-test-highlights-judicial-curiosity

‘Typically, organizations in the midst of transformation efforts spend significant time and resources trying to correct massive amounts of “technical debt” — the price of years of short-term decisions and prioritizations that result in an overly complex technological infrastructure. But equally challenging is managing organizations’ often undiscussed “process debt” — the build-up of often antiquated,…

‘It has been a month since Google’s spectacular goof. Its new AI Overviews feature was supposed to “take the legwork out of searching,” offering up easy-to-read answers to our queries based on multiple search results. Instead, it told people to eat rocks and to glue cheese on pizza. You could ask Google what country in Africa starts with…

‘New computing infrastructure means big tech is likely to miss emissions targets but they can’t afford to get left behind in a winner takes all market.’ Link: https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/04/can-the-climate-survive-the-insatiable-energy-demands-of-the-ai-arms-race

‘The recent rise in artificial intelligence systems, such as ChatGPT, poses a fundamental problem for the educational sector. In universities and schools, many forms of assessment, such as coursework, are completed without invigilation. Therefore, students could hand in work as their own which is in fact completed by AI. Since the COVID pandemic, the sector…

‘After years of negotiations and countless discussions, the final version of the EU AI Act should finally be adopted in mid-July 2024. From then, it will be another 24 months before far-reaching obligations apply for most companies. The AI Act will be the first regulation of algorithms based on “machine learning”. However, authorities around the globe have…

‘The American Bar Association and the ABA Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence released the results of its AI and Legal Education Survey, a compilation of insights gathered from law school administrators and faculty regarding the integration of artificial intelligence into legal education.’ Link: https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2024/06/aba-task-force-law-and-ai-survey/

‘Law is one of the knowledge domains that are most reliant on textual material. In this age of legal big data, and with the increased availability of legal text online, many researchers started working on the development of legal intelligent systems and applications. Over the last few years, researchers have focused on predicting judicial case…

‘When OpenAI first rolled out the ChatGPT app for Mac, it was exclusive to ChatGPT Plus subscribers. Unless you paid $20 per month, you needed to stick to the web app or the one on your smartphone. As of Tuesday, however, the Mac app is now free for everyone. And, honestly, you should probably give it…

‘Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing our society and bringing the legal profession with it. The use of Generative AI (GenAI) in legal proceedings has received negative publicity from high profile mishaps in court filings. In one case, attorneys used the publicly available online GenAI tool, ChatGPT, to write a legal brief in which ChatGPT proceeded…

‘The remarkable development of Large Language Models (LLMs) continues to revolutionize various human activities in different societal domains like education, communications, and healthcare. While facilitating the generation of coherent and contextually relevant text across a diverse plethora of topics, LLMs became a set of instruments available in different toolboxes of decision makers. In this way,…

‘The government has published guidance on Responsible AI in Recruitment which focuses on AI systems that are used by employers. The guidance sets out a range of considerations for the procurement and deployment of AI recruitment systems, identifies the potential ethical risks of doing so and outlines how AI assurance mechanisms can support the responsible procurement of…

‘The workforce’s stance on artificial intelligence is generally divided into two camps: One thinks AI will replace jobs and increase income inequality; the other thinks AI will make everyone’s jobs easier and inequities less pronounced.’ Link: https://qz.com/chatgpt-ai-steals-jobs-freelancers-1851557134

‘Researchers at the University of Reading fooled their own professors by secretly submitting AI-generated exam answers that went undetected and got better grades than real students.’ Link: https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/jun/26/researchers-fool-university-markers-with-ai-generated-exam-papers

‘Court View Generation (CVG) plays a vital role in the realm of legal artificial intelligence, which aims to support judges in crafting legal judgment documents. The court view consists of three essential judgment parts: the charge-related, law article-related, and prison term-related parts, each requiring specialized legal knowledge, rendering CVG a challenging task.Although Large Language Models…

‘The UK needs a system for recording misuse and malfunctions in artificial intelligence or ministers risk being unaware of alarming incidents involving the technology, according to a report.’ Link: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/26/artificial-intelligence-misuse-malfunctions-reporting-uk

‘The promise of AI is alluring — optimized productivity, lightning-fast data analysis, and freedom from mundane tasks — and both companies and workers alike are fascinated (and more than a little dumbfounded) by how these tools allow them to do more and better work faster than ever before. Yet in fervor to keep pace with…

‘The company behind the online retail revolution is getting in on the artificial intelligence revolution, too — with a secret weapon.’ Link: https://qz.com/amazon-generative-ai-chatbot-chatgpt-metis-1851558879

‘How will AI improve our lives in the years to come? From its inception six decades ago to its recent exponential growth, futurist Ray Kurzweil highlights AI’s transformative impact on various fields and explains his prediction for the singularity: the point at which human intelligence merges with machine intelligence.’ Link: https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_the_last_6_decades_of_ai_and_what_comes_next

‘As Apple announce the integration of generative AI across their platforms, Aleks and Kevin ask, do we actually know how much energy AI consumes and is it compatible with net zero?’ Link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00208g4?

‘Meta has created a system that can embed hidden signals, known as watermarks, in AI-generated audio clips, which could help in detecting AI-generated content online.’ Link: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/18/1094009/meta-has-created-a-way-to-watermark-ai-generated-speech/

‘AI startup Anthropic on Thursday debuted its updated AI model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which it said bests OpenAI’s GPT-4 in important tasks and is twice as fast as its previous model, Claude 3 Opus.’ Link: https://qz.com/anthropic-claude-3-5-sonnet-ai-chatgpt-openai-1851551091

‘The recent commercial release of a new generation of chatbot systems, particularly those leveraging Transformer-based large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, has caught the world by surprise and sparked debate about their potential consequences for society. While concerns about the existential threat posed by these technologies are often discussed, it is crucial to shift…

‘Lexis+ has made its debut, and Lexis+ AI is set to further the AI journey by adding the GPT component in June 2024. One cannot make the jump to the GPT version (with chat) without first upgrading to Lexis+. This is because Lexis+ relies on an entirely new server to deliver more extensive AI functionality…

‘The governance of artificial intelligence (AI) is at a historical juncture. Legislative acts, global treaties, export controls, and technical standards are now dominating the discourse over what used to be a predominantly market-driven space. Amidst all this frenzy, this paper explains why none of these projects will achieve ‘alignment’ of AI with the prospect of…

‘The problem is, large language models are so good at what they do that what they make up looks right most of the time. And that makes trusting them hard.’ Link: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/18/1093440/what-causes-ai-hallucinate-chatbots/

‘“Three sleepless nights”—that’s what Ethan Mollick, a Wharton associate professor, says a newcomer needs to spend experimenting with tools such as ChatGPT and Midjourney to get up to speed on the current state of generative artificial intelligence. But what’s next for this new technology? How will it evolve over time? And how will it change…

‘Microsoft’s AI chatbot, Copilot, has been steadily growing and adding new features since its introduction last year. (At that time, Microsoft called it Bing Chat.) As with all things AI, it can be difficult to keep up with the updates, changes, and new features, but Microsoft is adding them to Copilot at a steady clip.…

‘Generative AI has taken the world by storm over the last few years, and the world of scholarly communications has not been immune to this. Most discussions in this area address how we can integrate these tools into our workflows, concerns about how researchers and students might misuse the technology or the unauthorised use of…

‘Professional negligence lawyers need to grapple with the question of whether it is negligent to use – or not to use – artificial intelligence (AI), the Master of the Rolls has said.’ Link: https://www.legalfutures.co.uk/latest-news/vos-ai-will-redefine-contours-of-professional-negligence