AI Update: Public Unease, Another Author Suit, Is Your AI Conscious?

A recent Pew Research Center study reveals that public unease regarding artificial intelligence remains a major hurdle for businesses looking to incorporate AI-based tech into their operations, Legaltech News reports. Stephanie Goutos of Gunderson Dettmer Stough’s New York-based labor and employment practice suggests that “lawyers can proactively begin to address this by developing and implementing best practices to encourage the responsible use of [generative] AI within their organization.”

A group of 17 authors, including John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin, are the latest to sue OpenAI over concerns that the AI platform is using their copyrighted works without permission, the Associated Press reports. This suit joins several others across the country that will likely play a formative role in the future of how creatives and businesses understand intellectual property in relation to AI.

A recent Bloomberg Law survey found that some lawyers are concerned about the reputation of the legal profession, with a lack of clear guidance regarding use of AI among the reasons cited. “Respondents were also given an option to write in what topics they felt the rules need to address further,” Bloomberg explains. “‘AI’ or ‘technology’ was mentioned in 27 out of 40 (68%) of those responses.”

Former Secretary of Homeland Security and special adviser to the ABA AI Task Force Michael Chertoff urged regulators to take action to control AI use in a recent op-ed, also for Bloomberg Law, arguing that “the greater a company’s dependence on AI, the greater the likelihood it will be targeted by threat actors—whether to illicitly obtain sensitive information, disrupt core business functions for extortion purposes, or make a political statement.”

Is your AI product conscious? The New York Times breaks down a recent report from a group of researchers who have built upon empirical research to propose a rubric “that might suggest the presence of some presence in a machine.” The rubric draws from a concept called “computational functionalism,” which offers a particularly broad definition of consciousness.

Ethan Beberness is a Brooklyn-based writer covering legal tech, small law firms, and in-house counsel for Above the Law. His coverage of legal happenings and the legal services industry has appeared in Law360, Bushwick Daily, and elsewhere.