ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE LAW

It is too early to definitively predict how generative artificial intelligence (‘AI’) will affect the law and the legal profession. How much of the hype will come to pass, or whether the effects of AI will be revolutionary or evolutionary is yet unknown. Although the extent of those effects may not be fully evident today, early glimpses show the potential for structural disruption is real, pervasive, and likely to be far-reaching. This paper explores four research questions, explored strategically in a contested internationally underdeveloped regulatory environment — with significant regulatory lag in Australia — amidst vast and rapid technological change. It posits that AI is not ‘intelligent’ of itself but that enterprises that deploy AI tools can then act intelligently. This objective requires updated enterprise governance frameworks. It also posits that potential convergence of AI and legal linguistics is a new scholarly field which could open the path to Artificial General Intelligence, a requirement for legal utility beyond prosaic applications. This paper develops the research questions into original contributions in modern enterprise governance and the necessary conjoining of AI and legal linguistics. It identifies a process of ‘enculturation’ as AI technology and legal stakeholders learn about each other globally. ‘Enculturation’ facilitates the ‘myriad moments’ — encountered in creative and artistic spirits implicit in negotiations and dealing with the unexpected in court. It establishes that future legal stakeholder utility is derived from the enhancement and/or replacement of sentient human intelligence rests upon the confluence of logic, plain language, and law, underpinned by a command of ethics, linguistics, legal linguistics and linguistics engineering. The paper then provides Digital Readiness guidance for legal stakeholders including directors, trustees, practitioners, arbitrators and judicial officers, and detailed proposals for the development of Australian law as means of reducing legal risks.