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Comment by bsbechtel | Hacker News Reader

I know AI is a hot topic these days, and the technology hurdles are finally being overcome, but what about the human factor? It's human nature to want to control things, and integrating AI in a meaningful way into your life means giving up control of certain things. Delegating things to other humans is enormously challenging for many people (in fact, it's a key reason many startups fail!). I can't imagine delegating tasks with any sort of ambiguity to a machine being any easier.

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You're right that the human factor is huge. I work in this space and from all our conversations it doesn't seem like any legal clients would be comfortable working directly with an AI directly. They value the human touch and advice provided by an actual lawyer.

That being said, there is already a division of labor in the legal industry between client-facing work and more rote document analysis/prep. The latter is where I think we'll see most of the automation: instead of being supported by a bunch of associates, the partners will simply work with an AI.

Client interactions and higher-level decisions will still be entirely human.

> Client interactions and higher-level decisions will still be entirely human.

I wonder if people ever said that about travel agencies?

I think there are plenty of things that people today wouldn't be comfortable with. I know many people that aren't comfortable with the idea of self-driving cars. 15 years from now, the things people are comfortable with could change.

I agree that people will eventually change, but the timeline is more than 15 years.

Especially when you consider that the vast majority of legal customers are themselves more traditional. Comfort with pure AI for legal analysis will likely only come with the next generation of business managers.

"I wonder if people ever said that about travel agencies?"

Yep, they sure did. Or consider the restaurant business. With all other factors being equal, most of us would probably prefer a personal chef (or at least an expert one), an attentive, high-quality wait staff, fine china, real silverware, crystal glassware, linen tablecloths...

But they're not equal. In practice, McDonalds has a helluva lot more customers than Wolfgang Puck.

If this happens, it's probably going eat the legal industry from the bottom up. The rich will no doubt continue to have personal lawyers, just as they still have personal chefs. It will be the guys who want to contest a speeding ticket who will be the early adopters.

> It's human nature to want to control things

I don't think that's justified. I don't even know what it means. Am I ceding control to a computer when I use software? I love using software to take things out of my control. A mind boggling number of things relevant to my life are out of my control and I have no desire to control them. I'm not particularly special in this regard: Most of the things out of my control are voluntarily out of the control of millions of others.

Human nature seems to be the rhetorical black box that justifies every claim about human beings.

I just think AI will be the first front people will use due to time and cost efficiency. If it doesn't seem that will work, then I'm sure the person would go to real lawyers after. That initial AI would change the legal game for many law suits though.

* Gets sued for bad product * AI finds 10 law suits in this persons past of the same nature that got nullified.

This would be fairly simple for the AI but would save a lot of time and money.

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