After the hype of legal artificial intelligence: what now?

At last British Legal Technology Forum , held in London this week, several issues related to artificial intelligence applied to law were discussed. The blog Artificial Lawyer was there and published an interesting reflection on a new wave of opinions about artificial intelligence, which he called "Post-Hype AI Hype".

For those who are not familiar, Hype is something exaggerated and with a negative connotation . Any subject that is giving something to talk about, that is fashionable, but that at the same time has no proven foundation, is hyped. In the context of technology, something that is in hype brings with it a great fear that the current state of technology is not enough to solve the problems it proposes to face.

The current movement, diagnosed this week, maintains that the cycle of exacerbated expectations about The potential of artificial intelligence is coming to an end . Instead of discussing a distant future, this movement aims to reflect on practical and immediate applications, which generally require technologies that are already established. In other words, a new cycle has formed in the sector against artificial intelligence - but it is also a kind of hype.

Basically, We now have a new hype taking the place of the other . None of them were deliberately created, because they were composed of a sum of voices that really believed in what they promised as a solution to all problems. Today, retreaded, the hype is organized to avoid the terminology celebrated until then, but this is not something that comes without any difficulty. After all, albeit imprecisely, artificial intelligence is already a term incorporated into the current vocabulary. In any case, this has made communication possible so far.

Debating related issues talking about machine learning, natural language processing, automatic decision classification, among other terms, is something that would require much more energy. This is certainly not in the interest of companies that use jargon only as marketing, with no commitment to embedding the technology they advertise in their products.

It seems that the term artificial intelligence has lost its freshness . At the same time - and not by chance - some of its promises were simply not fulfilled for the legal market. We are experiencing a hangover similar to the one that medicine recently passed, as artificial intelligence has not discovered the "cure for cancer". And we still don't have the "cure for the processes".

From cycle to cycle, hype reveals itself as the very way of being of professional communities with limited control over what should be discussed and understood in depth. Once installed, it does not dissolve easily, being succeeded by a new promise that will not be fulfilled either. This chain of promises and frustrations is typical of sectors that consume technology, without having the tools to fully understand it.

Like this The hype is a consequence of our own lack of technical mastery , of our consequent superficiality in this field. Additional ingredients are the interest of people to feed the hype, for example, a lecturer who reaffirms their supposed knowledge or companies that sell the hype, as they work in the logic of immediate and facilitated communication.

The final elements are the words intelligence and artificial, which convey a very equivocal sense of what they really are when used together. It would be better if this technology did not have its content induced by words that we think we understand, because they are part of our language in other contexts.

Although a lawyer fully understands the legal challenges of his daily work, he would hardly understand everything that technologically surrounds the products available in his market. If he were told that the solution to his problems would be to use artificial intelligence, he would most likely be misled. After all, he may mistakenly imagine what it is about. In contrast, the same lawyer would not be affected if he received advice to use a "graph bank" solution.

Technical names do not communicate and do not sell either. In this sense, artificial intelligence is a victim of this unfortunate coincidence. To escape the new hype, it will be necessary for our community to dedicate itself to understanding what artificial intelligence really is and what its real possibilities are. Otherwise, we will continue in the succession of hypes , which alienate more than they inform.