If it works, will we trust AI as
a legal thinker?
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5072765
Generative
AI and the Future of Legal Scholarship
Since
ChatGPT's release in November 2022, legal scholars have grappled with
generative AI's implications for the law, lawyers, and legal
education. Articles have examined the technology's potential to
transform the delivery of legal services, explored the attendant
legal ethics concerns, identified legal and regulatory issues arising
from generative AI’s widespread use, and discussed the impact of
the technology on teaching and learning in law school.
By
late 2024, generative AI has become so sophisticated that legal
scholars now need to consider a new set of issues that relate to a
core feature of the law professor's work: the production of legal
scholarship itself.
To
demonstrate the growing ability of generative AI to yield new
insights and draft sophisticated scholarly text, the
rest of this piece contains a new theory of legal scholarship drafted
exclusively by ChatGPT. In other words, the article
simultaneously articulates the way in which legal scholarship will
change due to AI and uses the technology itself to demonstrate the
point.
The
entire piece, except for the epilogue, was created by ChatGPT (OpenAI
o1) in December 2024. The full transcript of the prompts and outputs
is available
here, https://chatgpt.com/share/676cc449-af50-8002-9145-efbfdf8ebb02,
but every word of the article was drafted by generative AI.
Moreover, there was no effort to generate multiple responses and
then publish the best ones, though ChatGPT had to be prompted in
one instance to rewrite a section in narrative form rather than as
an outline.
The
methodology for generating the piece was intentionally simple and
started with the following prompt:
"Develop a novel conception of the
future of legal scholarship that rivals some of the leading
conceptions of legal scholarship. The new conception should
integrate developments in generative AI and explain how scholars
might use it. It should end with a series of questions that legal
scholars and law schools will need to address in light of this new
conception."
After
ChatGPT provided an extensive overview of its response, it was asked
to generate each section of the piece using text “suitable for
submission to a highly selective law review.” The first such
prompt asked only for a draft of the introduction. The introduction
identified four parts to the article, so ChatGPT was then asked to
draft Parts I, II, III and IV in separate prompts until the entire
piece was completed. Because of output limits that restrict how much
content can be generated in response to a single prompt, each section
of the article is relatively brief. A much more thorough version of
the article could have been generated if ChatGPT had been prompted to
create each sub-part of the article separately rather prompting it to
produce entire parts all at once.
The
epilogue offers my own reflections on the resulting draft, which (in
my view) demonstrates the creativity and linguistic sophistication of
a competent legal scholar. Of course, as with any competent piece of
scholarship, the article has gaps and flaws. In other words, it is
far from perfect. But then again, very few pieces of legal
scholarship are otherwise. Rather than focusing on these flaws,
scholars should consider the profound implications of these new tools
for the scholarly enterprise. I discuss some of those implications
in the epilogue, but apropos of the theme of the piece, generative AI
has some useful ideas for us to consider in this regard.
AI
is coming. Are we ready?
https://researchportal.vub.be/en/publications/specific-laws-governing-use-of-ai-in-criminal-procedure-and-atten
Specific
Laws Governing Use of Ai in Criminal Procedure and Attentive Criminal
Judges: American Songbook for Global Listeners
Artificial
Intelligence (AI) can be used in the criminal justice system to
support human decision-making at various stages of the proceedings.
Despite heavy criticism on AI’s opacity, complexity,
non-contestability or unfair discrimination, such AI-implementations
are often favoured, in light of alleged accuracy, effectiveness or
efficiency in the overall decision-making process. After briefly
recalling some key functions of AI in criminal procedures, the paper
addresses whether and the degree to which AI-uses can comply with the
United States (US) Federal Rules of Evidence and the constitutional
rights to due process, equal protection and privacy. Recent case law
(e.g., Puloka and Arteaga) and legal initiatives, such as the 2024 AI
Policy and California’s 2024 Rules of Court, are also discussed.
This paper ends with five important take-homes for global readers and
regulators intending to introduce AI into their jurisdictions.
The
rules, they keep a changing…
https://databreaches.net/2025/01/04/new-york-modifies-data-breach-law-heading-into-2025/
New
York Modifies Data Breach Law Heading Into 2025
Liisa
M. Thomas and Kathryn Smith of Sheppard Mullin write:
As
2024 came to a close, New York Gov. Hochul signed two bills
(A8872A and S2376B)
amending New York’s data breach law. The modifications
change both what constitutes personal information
under the law, as well as modifying notification timing. The notice
modification is now in effect; the change to the definition of
personal information does not take effect until March 21, 2025.
As amended, companies
will now have 30 days from discovery of a breach to notify impacted
individuals. Previously, the law required notice to
individuals “in the most expedient time possible and without
reasonable delay.”
There is still an exception to the deadline for
the legitimate needs of law enforcement.
The
regulator to notify has also changed. Previously, businesses needed
to provide notice to the NY Attorney General, the Department of
State, and the Division of State Police. A fourth group has been
added. Now notice must also be sent to the New York Department of
Financial Services. Notification to each agency can be done
via form on
the New York AG website.
Read
more at The
National Law Review.
S2376B/A4737B
also strengthens the protections for medical data and health
insurance data by adding them to the definition of personal
information in identity theft:
Section 1. Subdivision 2 of section
190.77 of the penal law is amended by adding two new paragraphs d and
e to read as follows:
d. “medical information” means any
information regarding an individual’s medical history, mental or
physical condition, or medical treatment or diagnosis by a health
care professional.
e. “health insurance information”
means an individual’s health insurance policy number or subscriber
identification number, any unique identifier used by a health insurer
to identify the individual or any information in an individual’s
application and claims history, including, but not limited to,
appeals history.
