Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a hot topic of conversation lately. AI has rapidly infiltrated many industries, and as an aspiring lawyer, I have been thinking about the implications of AI in the legal field. While AI undeniably has many benefits, such as efficiency and accuracy, it also raises several ethical concerns.
AI has the potential to enhance efficiency and provide valuable insights for legal professionals. However, one primary concern with AI in the legal field is the lack of human judgment. While AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data to predict outcomes and provide recommendations, this eliminates the role of human judgment, which can be crucial to complex legal matters. Running on algorithms, there is also very little explanation as to how they arrive at certain conclusions based on given data.
Working in the legal field often involves handling large amounts of sensitive and confidential information, and client confidentiality and privacy need to always be preserved. As AI runs on algorithms, there will need to be safeguards in place with respect to protecting the sensitive information which is used and stored as AI adapts to various data to produce its outcomes. This means that AI will need to be regulated with strict data protection protocols and security measures.
While AI can help improve legal processes, there should be a high level of human oversight and accountability in place, where responsibility ultimately rests on legal professionals to review and validate outcomes generated by AI systems. There shouldn’t be a heavy reliance on technology, rather, it should be utilized as a tool to aid productivity and efficiency.
As legal professionals, we should reflect on the impact and risk of using AI tools to ensure that they align with ethical standards. With the use of AI being so new, there are hardly any guidelines in place for its use in the legal field. There should be a balance between utilizing AI and upholding ethical standards.
Meriam Noori, LLB