Space for legislation

Technological development has taken a new and frightening pace in the twenty-first century. The modern human being is not only surrounded by advancements in the technological area but is intrinsically connected to it. The impact of these seemingly non-radical changes can turn out to be extremely radical. It is now an accepted fact in scientific circles that Artificial Intelligence has the capability to surpass all possible intellectual barriers that humans haven’t been able to overcome. It is also begrudgingly accepted that even though the potential of Artificial Intelligence may be extremely powerful, it is already creating ripples in various sectors of the current form of society. The medical field, banking and financial sectors and even legal sectors are witnessing the impact of the development of Artificial Intelligence. Even though the scenes of futuristic movies where machines have taken over the world may be far away, it cannot be ignored that with the increasing influence of Artificial Intelligence and the things it is capable of, there is a space that the legal world needs to take care of. Difficult questions such as: how will Artificial Intelligence be held liable? Can there be separate rights for Artificial Intelligence if it can have any sort of creative output? As for now we don’t have constructive laws to depend upon apart from Article 12 of the United Nations Convention which basically says that the person responsible for the creation of a computer programme can be held liable for things done by that particular computer programme. The vicarious liability resembles a lot to the principle behind this law. The relationship between the acts done by a computer programme and that of a master-servant relationship is very similar. There can be subtle differences pointed between the two but at the end of the day, the principle (the programmer here) is held liable for any sort of damage caused by the programme.

Automation in the legal world

Artificial Intelligence, as mentioned above, is influencing almost every sector. Automation has become an important part of political discussions in developed countries such as the US. Even in the legal field tasks such as drafting, scrutinizing, compiling data along with high end skills such as predicting crimes, framing arguments and negotiating deals is something artificial intelligence is capable of, in its present form. Countless firms across the globe have automated to an extent where the job of a paralegal is becoming obsolete. As the President of the Canadian Bar Association, Janet Fuhrer said, “a junior lawyer will have access to a 25-year-plus archive of experience and legal knowledge, but a 25-year-experienced lawyer may not have access to the technology that the younger lawyer is using”. 

ROSS which is also known as the ‘attorney robot’ made headlines a few years ago. This programme has the ability to ask intelligent questions to improve reasoning. It can answer questions in an astonishingly intelligent fashion and because its database keeps updating, it can cite accurate passages from relevant judgements while doing so. It was reported not long back ago when Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas signed a deal with KIRA Systems which is a Canadian Artificial Intelligence making Mangaldas the first Indian legal firm to boast the usage of Artificial Intelligence. Its specialty is that it can extract targeted clauses from contracts or any other legal document. Such programmes condense research time from, months to days. This is an exponential change of pace that the other firms have to compete with, pushing up the demand for such programmes.