Should AI in the law be controlled by the people who use AI versus the companies that build it and develop solutions for it? People in the law meaning legal professionals and the public.
The New York Times’ Cade Metz reports,
“A year ago, Igor Babuschkin left xAI, the artificial intelligence start-up he founded with the tech mogul Elon Musk.
Now, he is among a growing number of voices across Silicon Valley arguing that A.I. should not be dominated by any one company. He believes this transformational technology should be controlled by the people who use it, much like a personal computer or a smartphone.
Mr. Babushkin’s new start-up, River AI, wants to put a new kind of computer inside people’s homes, so they can own and use A.I. without oversight from anyone else, including River AI.”
“A computer on every desk and in every home.” Sounds like Gates, Allen and Balmer in 1980. When Balmer told his Dad and Mom about their cause, his Mom asked “…why the heck would a person need a computer?”
Rather than AI companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI, AI technologies would be open-source so that anyone, including businesses, independent software developers and consumers free to use and modify the technologies.
In the law, this would mean that the large legal publishers and legal tech/AI companies would not be selling AI solutions to legal professionals. AI would be open-source with users having the capacity to manage the data they own or have access for their desired goals.
This would also mean consumers and small business owners would have the ability to to address legal challenges. Maybe have real access to the law.
Babuschkin told Metz “We hope that in the future, A.I. will be trained to benefit you as the individual, rather than being a centralized thing that is controlled by one big corporation.”
Far fetched? AI may be more powerful than we think. Computers were.