Day 5: Artificial Intelligence & Law

DAY 5: AI & Law

MODERATOR: Chukwuechetagom Okenwa

DATE: March 9, 2024

TIME: 5PM

SPEAKER: Tavonia Evans

Biography of the speaker

Tavonia Evans is a 4x Founder, Engineer, Designer, Data Scientist, who founded (and developed) the decentralized cryptocurrency Guapcoin.

Tavonia's vision is to use Guapcoin for the economic empowerment of black people especially black-owned businesses. Not new to the world of startups, Tavonia made the transition into the world of Blockchain in 2016 as a result of identifying Cryptocurrency as a tool that could stimulate economic growth and financial freedom within the Black community.

She is one of the first Black women heralded as being the founder and lead engineer in developing a coin with such a mission within the Black community. She was featured in Glamour Magazine's May 2018 "Women in Crypto", CNN, Complex TV, CNBC, Marie Claire, Blavity, Ozy as well as other media publications for her work in the space. Since 2017, she has been an expert global voice for blockchain, and has spoken on diversity and the impact of blockchain technology in a variety of forums.

Benefits of AI

Artificial Intelligence has a lot of benefits such as:

The simplification of tasks: AI aids in breaking down tasks to its simplest form and the complexities of tasks are made easier in order for better understanding. It also comes with the ease of interacting with various documents that have been created by the user. The user can query the documents that have been made through the use of AI.

Translation: AI breaks the barrier of continental languages and aids in proliferation of jobs and the opportunities thereof. Where a person is qualified for a job but lacks the lingual understanding of another country, AI can be used as a translator between the two parties thereby securing the opportunity for the job seeker. For instance, where a Chinese wants to work for a French but doesn't understand french, AI would be of tremendous help.

Easy assimilation: Some terms are difficult to understand and uneasy to teach people of lower understanding. AI can break down such complex definitions into the age range of each person looking to understand the complex concept.

Demerits of AI

Inasmuch as AI has its benefits, it also has its demerits which tend to scare people, they include:

Ethical breaches: simply put, AI has no restraint. It poses a great risk and has not been introduced into some fields yet because it cannot make moral choices or understand barriers or boundaries. Furthermore, most people are insecure about relinquishing their personal information which AI needs to function properly on certain things.

AI bias: persons who programmed the AI may have included their personal beliefs on any subject matter or may have included their bias against certain topics. Therefore, their bias has been structured into the programming of AI which would make it biased during the production of results when queried. 

Other than the above instance, since AI's information is gotten from a unique scan of materials relevant to the subject matter requested from the internet, the possibility that the materials are racist, sexist or subjective to bias is high, thereby making AI biased.

The factions: there are three divisions of people who react to AI and the effects it has.

i. People who are afraid that AI will take their jobs. It may be true, there are certain aspects where AI has been substituted for human resources. However, it is best to think of the fact that these machines or technologies need to be operated or managed, this in turn creates job opportunities.

ii. People who believe it can help in their career. It is pertinent to note that this set of people have taken a plunge into the field of AI. They have experimented with it and have employed and incorporated it into their work, through this, they have seen its benefits.

iii. Technical people. These set of people are those that write the code for AI or believe on the dependence of AI and its technicalities.

Stating that one of the demerits of AI is the fact that it is expensive is incorrect. This is because there are open source AI's, they are free and accessible to all and still functional. They include: Chat GPT, etc.

The Future of AI & Law:

AI has been incorporated into Law and has aided in a lot of aspects. Other than the ease in researching and accessing precedents, with the rapid rate of increase in AI and its breakthroughs, a possible future is seen when these AI's may become personal AI's. Personal in the sense that each person, in this case a lawyer, possessing them can indoctrinate the AI with the idiosyncrasies of the lawyer and allow the AI to represent him in court.

In simpler words, the AI goes to court in place of the lawyer but behaves like the lawyer who is absent because of the skills which has been imbibed into it. 

One of the reasons AI and Law are similar is due to its dynamic nature. They change and it is fluid not static like other concepts.

Q&A

Q: What sites or virtual programmes can one get certification on AI?

A: I would recommend Coursera for platform courses on AI. Due to its affordable rate and the fact that they offer certification at the completion of your course. You can also use Udemy and also, deeplearning.Ai (Deep learning dot AI).

Q: Won't AI take away our critical thinking?

A: I would say that AI makes one smarter, it doesn't necessarily take away your critical thinking if you're an inquisitive person. You would always want to query AI to see if it is reliable or to measure the veracity of each statement made by it. AI isn't even at the point where it can do every single thing for us, therefore, that total dependence isn't there.

Q: What laws and policies can be put in place to regulate AI's "takeover?"

A: In order to regulate AI, you have to understand it better. This means one would have to plunge into the depths of AI. However, taking over is part of human evolution, it is not necessarily the fault of AI. The eradication of certain fields which paves way for another field is part of the evolution of the society.

Humans are used to taking their time to make decisions, they want to analyse everything before they make a decision. However, the rapid evolution of AI takes away that time from them, hence, they have to make rapid choices to keep up with AI, this is what scares most people. They feel choiceless about it.

To set those policies to regulate AI's proliferation and takeover, one needs to study AI.