TAKEAWAYS:
Legal Clarity at Risk: AI and strategies like those of the Federalist Society can jeopardize the clarity of legal principles, posing a threat to the law's effectiveness as a guide for equitable human conduct.
Truth's Foundational Role: Truth and honesty are foundational to the law, and manipulating truth through denial, or AI-generated content is dangerous to ensuring fair judgment within the legal system.
Caution in AI Integration: While we have gained efficiency through AI in legal processes, we should remain concerned about manipulations in AI algorithms and consider thoughtful approaches to AI integration in legal determinations to safeguard credibility and justice in legal proceedings.
For the last 247 years, the "Rule of Law" embodied in the Constitution of the United States has served the country well and has been a model for other countries to emulate, if not copy. The document's steadfastness and guidance have matured through a plethora of small and gargantuan challenges only to survive as a template to repair or improve the lives of the country's citizens. What's not to like?
The specific and undermining strategies used by some people, like the Federalist Society, and the ubiquity of Artificial Intelligence to aim for and compromise reality have crippled an understanding of the law as a guide toward equity in the conduct of human affairs. At times, trying to understand the perplexity of the situation retires to a mumbling of ineffable and convoluted aspersion, sullying the clarity of the past with imponderables. Yeah, it is that clear.
On the other hand, one thing is clear: the law, in its basest form, enshrines the truth and honesty of its use as a baseline for consideration and judgment. Aristotle has said that reality is out there; how we come to experience it is through the senses and our intuition of relationships between its parts. We did not "discover" the theory of relativity since it has been part of the physics of how our universe functions since the beginning, 13.83 billion years ago. We discover, to our surprise and delight, a new species of organism, but it has been with us for many eons, most probably. So, the truth is fantastic to us, but to the casual observer practicing the scientific arts, it is another chapter in the book of life. Denying, deflecting, lying, prevaricating, and manipulating the truth is not dealing with the reality of our lives but diverting it to please or release us from guilt, shame, incarceration, death, retribution, and other penalties. The denial is also used to seize wealth and power to satisfy greed, retribution, and egomania.
The Catholic confession is a gimmick, yes, a good one, in that of being able to verbalize the impossible to face the truth, share it with another, and get a penalty, even the score, physically harmless, that will not total your self-esteem and come to appreciate that no one is perfect, and you are not alone; very human.
The manipulation of text, video, and audio by Artificial Intelligence follows a format by the algorithm, prejudged and pre-planned, to come to a stated result, not by the natural progression of events but by artificial means to satisfy a prescribed result. The random search of AI in its instruction to serve a preordained 'truism' does not question the validity nor "truthiness," and only serves up what was demanded. The law requires evidence and the test of its validity against all attempts to create doubt. Judgment of any penalty for digression from legal activity can be handed down on the test of the best truth.
The validity of AI is now apparently unchallenged and, in its ubiquity, can obfuscate and derail the value and direction of "truthful" occurrences toward self-serving outcomes. That is invalid when dealing with life because the fact remains that preordained outcomes are rare. In contrast, situational outcomes close to expectations are hard-fought realities or sometimes considered "miracles." The law is imperfect, and the legal system continually looks for improvements in its functioning through study, use, review, and debate, at least in the theory of its acceptance to guide conduct.
Should AI be used to "help" with legal determinations? Argument? Research? The attraction of saving thousands of hours of legal research is undeniable, and structuring an argument based on precedent is salutary, but is it truthfully applicable? I would be irate to know that a decision in my case was made with a deletion, or addition, intentional or not, in the setup to an algorithm to be used as evidentiary proof and waving the paperwork in front of a jury as credibility in hand. Calling out AI, in its use for any reason, in some credible and assuring way, may offer an additional viewpoint based on the instructions to a code writer by any authority.
