This story is about the implications of the latest developments in legal tech. Before we get to it, I want to ask a question and just leave it there — for us to keep it in mind as we plough through the latest wonders of the AI world. The question is, what is point of our existence as human beings on Earth?
Chatbot Passed the Uniform Bar Exam
Word on the street is that the latest Microsoft-backed AI has passed the universal bar exam, an exam that lawyers in the United States have to pass in order to get licensed to practice law. Not only did it pass it but its score “fell in the top 10% of test takers.”
The AI software, made by the Microsoft partner OpenAI, is called “GPT-4.” It is an upgrade from GPT-3.5, which is what the recently famous ChatGPT program is based on. In case you are curious, “GPT” stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer,” which is a computer language model that uses “deep learning” to produce text.
Deep learning stands roughly for combing through vast amounts of data, algorithmically extracting meaningful characteristics of different types, and then summing them up in a way that makes it look like the computer “understands.”
This software falls under the definition of “generative AI,” which is the type of AI that goes beyond analyzing large amounts of data and producing a summary and that is capable of generating its own “creative” output based on the data is has analyzed.
Per OpenAI’s GPT-4 Technical Report, the program was tested “on a diverse set of benchmarks, including simulating exams that were originally designed for humans.”