Roy Amara formulated in the 1960s while he was the president of the Institute for the Future:
„We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.“
The earliest known publication of Amara’s Law was in the book „The Singularity Is Near“ by Ray Kurzweil in 2005. In 2023, this is still true for LegalTech as well as AI.
Kira was founded in 2011, we use it broadly since 2014. And there are myriads of other comparable products that use machine learning/deep learning to analyse documents. It’s a commodity by now. DeepL Translator and Writer, Naix Redaction, Litera ContractCompanion, and many more that I can’t talk about publicly.
Apple’s dictation, navigation, and image recognition, on iPhones, iPads, or Macs are stunning. And the that AI makes that happen runs on the device for years!
AI-assisted breast cancer detection is another groundbreaking example. It has advanced to the point where it can detect cancer four years before it develops. This is saving lives.
Kira, DeepL, Naix, ContractCompanion, and Apple aren’t that perfect yet (I’m looking at you especially, Siri), but they’re good enough to simplify our lives, save a lot of time and deliver consistent quality.
It’s amazing what we do with AI without thinking it’s anything special, and how well it works already.
Generative AI in general and ChatGPT in particular take the cake because the results are so impressive formally and textually, and often content-wise. But as we know not all results are always correct, true or up-to-date. Plus the problems of data protection, business and professional secrecy.
Many hail in surprise that GPT-4 can create a webpage in HTML from a sketch on a napkin. This is also technically demanding and super impressive for an amateur. But it is not helpful in any way. In 2023, no one should „paint“ a website in HTML anymore – except for educational purposes. At the moment when it can create a full-blown WordPress website at least, not a single page, we are there.
Microsoft 365 Copilot might be key to bringing the overflowing complexity of Office products back on track. The interface changes of the last few years have not brought any substantial improvements for beginners but have annoyed experts at large.
I do not want to play it down. Roy and Ray. I am excited and on fire for it. But there is a long and winding road to go. It is not for nothing that ChatGPT is called a free research preview. Exactly one year ago, I gave an internal lecture entitled „Legal Tech – Euphoria, Enervation and Enlightenment“. Still fits.