Artificial Intelligence Cannibalism and the Law

Abstract

Lawyers are already using - and misusing - large language models like ChatGPT in their daily lives as they practice law. Despite recent headlines pointing out the very real downsides of misuse of the technology, it is all but certain that lawyers will use LLMs with increasing frequency more in the coming years.4 Indeed, many law schools, recognizing that lawyers need to understand LLMs, are scrambling to train students on best practices. But LLMs are racing toward a cliff that could severely undercut their usefulness to lawyers, and potentially even stifle the development of law itself.

As news articles, blog posts, and even works of fiction generated by AI make up more and more of the internet, those outputs will form an ever larger share of the data training sets of future LLMs. Recent studies suggest this is potentially catastrophic for the model’s stability and could result in more misinformation and increasing “AI hallucinations.” Such a result would lessen the utility of these tools for lawyers, and could even have profound impacts on the development of law. Further, if lawyers are overly reliant on generative AI in their practice, they risk undermining their own creative processes and further stunting the development of law.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, algorithm, legal standards