Artificial Intelligence Cited for Unlicensed Practice of Law

March 8, 2007 5:52 pm by Markus.

I just read an article in the Wired blog titled “AI Cited for Unlicensed Practice of Law” citing a ruling from a court upholding its decision that the owner through the expert system he developed has given unlicensed legal advise. While an expert system is a clear cut case (as the system always does exactly what it was told [minus errors in the rules]; it just follows given rules and makes logical conclusions), this becomes more interesting in cases in which the machine learns or otherwise modifies its behavior over time. For example, lets say I put an AI software online that interacts with people and learns over time. Should I be held responsible if the program does something bad? What if I was not the person that taught it that particular behavior? This will probably be a topic that the courts will have to figure out in the future. For one, people should not be able to hide behind actions their computer has done. But what if it is reasonably beyond the capability of the individual to forsee what the AI has done?

This will probably end up being the next big challenge for courts just like the internet has been. It is interesting how the internet has created legal problems just with people being able to communicate more easily with each other: think trademark issues, advertising restrictions for tobacco or copyright violations (fair use differs from country to country; what is legal in one might be illegal in another) …

Update: And it just started. Check out this article: Colorado Woman Sues To Hold Web Crawlers To Contracts

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