AI lawyers and judges? Not just yet

CHATGPT has revived the debate over the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to disrupt the work that humans do. Buoyed by the promise that AI holds, predictions that AI will quickly upend several professions and change the value of human output forever abound.

The legal profession, often considered traditional and resistant to change, is not spared. Predictions have ranged from AI being yet another tool to AI imminently replacing your lawyer or judging your cases. This debate is not new. Before ChatGPT, there were electronic discovery and predictive coding, which prompted clairvoyants to predict the replacement of lawyers, only for such technology to ultimately serve as aides.

How much of this current debate around ChatGPT is hype? To separate the wheat from the chaff, it is vital to strip ChatGPT and its like down to their basics.