Guzyal Hill urged lawyers and law students to upskill in the area of AI
Charles Darwin University associate professor Guzyal Hill has used ChatGPT to draft domestic violence legislation in a study that sought to test the AI tool’s legal drafting ability.
Working together with the Australian Law Council, Hill asked ChatGPT to compare, analyse and produce legislation aimed towards domestic violence, which Hill said “represents a complex human problem, with up to 50 women dying every year in Australia alone”. She looked to determine whether AI could help generate a “high-quality definition of domestic violence”.
At the end of several test rounds. ChatGPT’s definition of domestic violence was compared with that presented by the Australian Law Council. The results revealed that “human drafting is still superior”, Hill shared in a media release.
Nonetheless, she pointed out that ChatGPT was “very useful in classifying and identifying underlying patterns of types of domestic violence”, and she urged lawyers and law students to upskill in the area of AI.
“Eluding or ignoring AI has many unpredictable drawbacks and at least several predictable dangers, such as making major mistakes in misuse of AI; missing an opportunity to lead the debate on the development of law with the emergence of AI; and allowing experts from other fields to develop solutions that do not consider fundamental human rights or contradict foundational principles of rule of law”, Hill said. “Without any doubt, AI poses serious risks and threats if used unchecked. Lawyers and law students should treat AI in a way that is practical, cautious, and yet curious”.
She added that there was an opportunity to for AI to change the way lawyers approached the law.
“At this point, AI systems are an augmentation of human acuity rather than an abrogation of legal analysis and reasoning. We, as lawyers, have an opportunity to inhabit this new AI domain with the potential to transform law and the way we approach law globally”, Hill said.
Hill’s findings were published last December in The Loophole: Journal of the Commonwealth Association of Legislative Counsel.
