How Will AI Change Law & the Legal Industry? (Level 3)

The deeper, philosophical question of how AI will change society.

Image by Tomasz Sienicki

Let’s explore how AI will change law and the legal industry. 

I propose we divide the question into three sub-categories. 

Each one represents a level of abstraction from the practical stuff (Level 1) to the more speculative (Level 2), and finally towards metaphysical, futuristic thinking (Level 3). 

Level 1: How will lawyers use AI in their work? 

Level 2: How will regulation affect AI? 

Level 3: How will AI affect society? 

At Level 3, we are no longer considering how laws will help to shape AI's development but how it will impact society over the next years and decades. The job of lawyers has traditionally been to perceive the world in retrospect but considering how powerful the impact of this technological wave can be, foresight is badly needed. 

Level 3: How will AI affect society?

On the façade of The Copenhagen Court House is inscribed "Med lov skal man land bygge" which translates to: "With law shall the country be built".

The quote originates from Codex Holmiensis, the oldest manuscript of the Code of Jutland signed by the King of Denmark, Valdemar the Victorious, in his year of death in 1241. 

The first page of Codex Holmiensis (Source)

The quote remains as true today as it was roughly 800 years or 32 generations ago. Laws are the “building blocks” of a country. 

Humans can comfortably maintain approx. 150 stable relationships, Dunbar’s number. An isolated tribe with less than 150 members would likely not need formal rules to function, since everyone would be familiar with each other and know who to trust or distrust. But as soon as the number of tribe members exceeds 150, it’s difficult, and soon hereafter impossible, to form and maintain personal connections with everyone. 

To manage a group much larger than 150 people in which everyone has a fair saying, common ground rules need to be established. The larger the group, the more unambiguous and voluminous the rules. Think of a democratic country or a supranational organization like the EU which governs the lives of millions of people. The legal framework that keeps stability and intactness needs to be extremely complex, and the majority of citizens need to have faith in the system and follow its rules to make it work. 

At the time Valdemar the Victorious ruled Denmark, it was believed that laws could express “the truth”. The first two paragraphs of Codex Holmiensis reads:

“With law shall the country be built but if all men were content with what is theirs and let others enjoy the same right, there would be no need for a law. But no law is as good as the truth, but if one wonders what the truth is, then shall the law show the truth. “

Very few people in contemporary times would agree that the law shows “the truth”. What truth? Law is a social construct after all, as is politics, money, and organized religions, only enabled by a common language. 

Then, the rise of social media has obfuscated the meaning of “truth” and “facts”. Conspiracy theories run rampant, strange minority views are nurtured and grow in echo chambers (known as the “toaster fucker problem”), and users can say whatever they want on the same footing as everyone else but without the accountability and social consequences that would follow if they knew the people they were communicating with in real life. The complex body of laws civil societies have built up through centuries barely apply in cyberspace, here they are reduced to terms of service agreements on Big Tech Platforms and algorithmic censorship. 

John Perry Barlow wrote “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” in 1996, writing:

“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear. 

(..)

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

(..) 

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before”

Unfortunately, the opposite of Barlow’s vision came true. BigTech is effectively taking the role of governments on the internet now, and raising kids on iPads with an information diet of YouTube and TikTok while traditional values that humans historically derived a sense of meaning from such as religion, nation, work, family, local communities, and friendships have diminished in importance.

I am not saying this is Big Tech’s fault or any individual person’s fault. Even social media companies could not have seen the massive impact of its services coming. When Mark Zuckerberg started “The Facebook” for him and his friends to rate the hotness of girls on college campus, he couldn’t have foreseen that the same platform would be used a few years later to flip the US presidential elections and make the UK leave the EU. 

Now, we are seeing a new technological wave that could have an equally – or who knows, larger - transformative impact on society as social media. We have barely recovered from the last wave and here comes the next, better grab your life vest. 

AI’s impact on society