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The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is sounding the alarm over the looming threat of generative artificial intelligence. It’s coming for 27 percent of jobs! That’s the conclusion of its latest report, prompting clickbaity headlines all over the place. And to the extent the OECD enjoys a public relations win… kudos.
But the report itself makes a series of comical leaps up to and including the conclusion that highly skilled professionals — in particular legal professionals — are most at risk.
“Occupations in finance, medicine and legal activities which often require many years of education, and whose core functions rely on accumulated experience to reach decisions, may suddenly find themselves at risk of automation from AI,” said the OECD.
It added that highly skilled occupations were most exposed to AI-powered automation, such as workers in the fields of law, culture, science, engineering and business.
Legal industry jobs are at risk from advances in AI, but the report isn’t talking about executive assistants and Biglaw paralegals, it specifically calls out the legal jobs involving years of education… it’s talking about lawyers.
Where do they get the idea that lawyers are in trouble?
AI breakthroughs had resulted in cases where output from AI tools – such as ChatGPT – was indistinguishable from that of humans. As a result, major economies could be at a tipping point, the OECD said.
Um, it was highly distinguishable.
ChatGPT caselaw may fool ill-informed or lazy attorneys who don’t know or care that it isn’t really a research database, but its output is in no regard “indistinguishable.” If the ChatGPT sanctions scandal — or its Colorado corollary — taught us anything, it’s that the benefits of generative AI stop short riiiiiiight about the point where “years of education” and “accumulated experience” kick in.
So if the OECD wasn’t paying attention to ChatGPTgate in the U.S., how did it back up this conclusion? This is the section that talks about legal jobs and here’s the support and it offers exactly two justifications.
One, AI has passed some law licensing exams. The warrant for this argument is that bar exams are a good proxy for what it takes to be a lawyer. This is… dubious. Every year, excellent lawyers fail the bar and terrible lawyers pass it. It’s a generalist exam in a specialist age providing little, if any, skill evaluation that rewards a closed book form of problem solving that would earn a lawyer sanctions in the real world.
That an AI can pass the bar exam is an argument against the bar exam, not a reason to fear AI attorneys.
Two, and we’ll quote from the report:
Some have raised concern that the latest wave of generative AI may expand the range of occupations at risk of automation even further. Several occupation groups have voiced concern about the most recent wave of generative AI. In February 2023, animators were up in arms when an animation studio used AI generative software to create background images for a new film, threatening many jobs in the industry (Harris, 2023[27]). Voice actors (O’Connor, 2022[24]) and writers (Brodsky, 2022[25]) are equally worried about what AI might mean for their jobs, and lawyers are another profession where AI is expected to replace a considerable share of human work (Hirani, 2023[26]).
That’s it? Some lawyers somewhere are “worried” about it? We’re making policy decisions off of what lawyers might worry about, because that’s a much more terrifying prospect. And the Hirani article cited to support this claim doesn’t even reach that conclusion! At most it suggests that some tasks might be replaced, but notes that “However, all lawyers/legal consultants may not be able to be completely replaced by AI, as they are involved in advising their clients on a case-by-case basis.”
In any event, this report is really stretching it.
There are a lot of ways to phrase it, but attorneys won’t lose their jobs to AI, they’ll lose their jobs to other attorneys who use AI. It’s an efficiency battle akin to the introduction of computers. Some stodgy lawyers lost out because they refused to leave the library and use Lexis, but they were replaced by lawyers who did. And it didn’t shrink the industry because faster legal work just meant more legal work.
AI revolution puts skilled jobs at highest risk, OECD says [Guardian]
Earlier: For The Love Of All That Is Holy, Stop Blaming ChatGPT For This Bad Brief
Lawyer Figures Out ChatGPT Made Up Fake Cases In His Brief On Day Of Hearing
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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