Should AI assistants be allowed to provide legal advice?

Use these indicators to tag your arguments by copy and pasting them from here. Please use proper indentations for  Objections

• Pro Argument in favor of the position
• Con Argument against the position
  • Objection Objection to the argument.
    • Objection Objection to the objection.
• Con Second argument against the first possibility.

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Position: Yes, AI assistants should be allowed to provide legal advice

Relevant details, definitions and assumptions regarding the first possibility.

• Pro Lawyers are expensive ($250 - $350 per hour, on average for a lawyer vs $20/month for GPT4 access) and so using AI could democratize access to legal advice
  • Objection High legal costs are from a shortage of lawyers for many popular services. This shortage is not due to a total shortage of lawyers but from a misallocation of lawyers.
    • Objection Therefore AI would help fill the gap of lack of lawyers for popular services.
• Pro AI assistants could in theory work more quickly than human lawyers, increasing the speed of the legal process
  • Objection Speed may sacrifice accuracy and quality of service
• Pro Lawyers cannot be fully trusted to work in their clients' best interests, but AI assistants can be transparently programmed to do so
  • Objection AI assistants can also be programmed to work in their developers'/owners' best interests instead of the interests of the clients
• Pro AI-powered legal assistants can help streamline processes, improve efficiency, and assist law professionals in various tasks such as legal research, document review, deposition preparation, and contract analysis
• Pro AI-driven tools can create more time for lawyers and legal professionals by automating routine tasks such as legal research and analysis, document management, and billing
  • Objection Lawyers and other legal professionals may miss mistakes made in these routine tasks, and they may miss more mistakes over time as they lose familiarity with the tasks
    • Objection Technology has historically increased productivity. There is no reason to believe that lawyers would pay for a system that decreases their ability to service their clients.

Position: No, AI assistants should not be allowed to provide legal advice

• Pro Hallucinations could wreck havoc in the courtroom
  • Objection While chatGPT currently will hallucinate legal advice and should be used with caution when being used as a legal assistant other systems such as retrieval augmented generation (RAG) are showing promise in removing hallucinations. The desertion should be up to the lawyer.
  • Objection Humans are also quite capable, and do at times, write bogus court filings
• Con Argument against the second possibility.
• Pro People and corporations with more resources can access better quality AI assistants, further increasing legal inequality
• Pro AI legal assistants lack the ability to exercise professional judgment or discretion, which is often required in providing legal advice tailored to the specific needs of a client
• Pro AI assistants may struggle to understand the nuances of a particular case or legal issue, as they rely on programmed algorithms and lack the contextual understanding that human lawyers possess
• Pro They may not have the breadth of knowledge and expertise that human lawyers possess across various areas of law

Position: AI should only be allowed to provide legal advice if...

• Pro Argument in favor of the second possibility.
• The AI assistant is properly licensed.
• The AI assistant consents.
• Con Argument against the second possibility.