Using Artificial Intelligence with balance and caution

AI could revolutionise consumerism and eliminate the current growing tired algorithms employed by the likes of Amazon et al. We will be able to select our goods on an immediately ‘thought-of’ basis through AI glasses or AI microchips embedded in our bodies and this will ‘speed up’ our decisions. However, not all fast decisions are good. Eliminating swathes of people out of the equation in relation to interaction between airlines and consumers has left millions of customers with little or no recourse when flights are cancelled, re-arranged and airlines have leveraged consumers by promising ‘budget’ prices but charging excessive fees for items considered to be a necessary part of travel – such as weighty baggage for long haul and being able to eat on a plane or sit next to loved ones. Overall, automation might have affected prices and ability to travel but the method of delivery and service levels are far from satisfactory and governments do not generally step in to assist.

What makes anyone think AI will be a different story? The stand off between regulators and social media operators has proven that private business accelerates first, abuses rights, causes young generational suicides and depression through lack of safeguards and then the state steps in later on struggling to work out which regulations to apply and how. This lack of foresight and planning is portrayed as allowing ‘innovation to flourish’ before curtailing it. Whilst I believe law should be reflexive, I also don’t see why it can’t be planned and then be reflexive. Laws can be planned now for AI.

In our businesses, before we truly embed AI we must apply the same or greater responsibility than we current do when we think about the environment; sustainability; CSR and the greater good. We must think whether our decisions will actually harm consumers for the sake of excessive profits and whether we will change a system that will ultimately create a more difficult and unrewarding system for the majority. The ‘AI’ revolution should not be exploited to create an ‘AI’ gap between the powerful and weak.

I will be looking carefully at how much ‘AI’ I can cost effectively introduce into a legal services business. However, I won’t be replacing Thai lawyers who have a unique set of skills and mindset for dealing with the Thai legal system, with Thai AI bots anytime soon. Instead, I will invest in developing my team’s skills to harmonise with AI products to assist them with their work, eliminate mundane tasks but allow them to accelerate and develop themselves to become superhuman lawyers, not unemployed. Whether I can achieve that, remains to be seen.

I feel excited about AI and what is springing up from different parts of the globe as a ‘new way of doings things’. However, I believe we should share a healthy trepidation and caution on how quickly and for what reasons we adopt AI in various systems and organisations in which we have an input or control over. Balance is rational, but how rational will an AI bot be if it is programmed incorrectly or with gaps or by irrational humans?

By Desmond Hughes, Senior Partner of Hughes Krupica
Hughes Krupica is a law firm which specialises in Real Estate; Construction; Hospitality; Corporate; Commercial; Tech; Dispute Resolution; and Litigation, operating from Phuket, servicing clients in relation to their business activities in Thailand and in other regions of Asia.