 Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us. We had a great gas today. I'm really excited about it We have a technologist a law school dean. We have an online mediation expert We have different perspectives that we're going to talk about artificial intelligence Today we and Brian Pappas joining us. He's a current chair of the American Bar Association section of this view resolution So I have to be the dean at the University of North Dakota law school two very demanding tasks at the same time So Brian's an expert in juggling responsibilities. We have Susan Guthrie with us who's an expert in online mediation That's why I wanted her to come and talk with us. But again, Susan does lots of different things She's an odd award-winning podcast host. She's a trainer She's an attorney This probably more that she does that she can tell us about she's also the chair elect or the section of this view resolution and Beeman cartels and has joined us today. I Became acquainted with him just a day ago He's the sublime of somebody that's very active in our section of this view resolution I'm really excited and we have this connection because Eman has been involved with technology for at least 20 years He founded a company launched at labs But he's got lots of other experience too and I'm really interested and excited to hear from him one thing I like about Disappeating in these programs is that I always learn something and I just bet I'm gonna learn a great deal from a from a tree Just today. So thank you very much for joining us I thought we could start at discussions just very generally and they ask you how are you using the AI? Yourselves and how are you witnessing others using it? And we can just kind of free flow conversation move between people. Maybe I'll start with with Susan Oh, well, it's it's interesting. I use it all day every day, but for the most part it's large language model generative AI in the form of chat dpt being Bard I'm sort of a universal user these days I'll use any of them and all of them all day long And I use them throughout you mentioned all the different things that I do I use them Throughout my day in a variety of different ways to support both my practices As well as my trainings my presentations. I find it an incredible tool Due to its creativity though. It's a constant for me now Hey, Brian Well, I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum. So I I've played with it. I've explored it I think it's really interesting But I haven't used it So I'm I'm actually I have a lot of people here at the law school who are Extremely engaged in AI and utilizing it thinking about it. It's just not something that I I go to on a daily basis But I'll come back to you and I have to ask you because as as head of the law school You know that your students are using that and you know there's got to be concerns at your law school with your faculty and also with the students between themselves as And what are people doing is somebody getting an advantage over me that I don't have I'm do they have access to the resources that I don't have just because they happen to have more money or better computer or better online connections So there's a lot we can talk about in that in an academic environment Eman We could probably just sit back. I'll let you start to talk about your experiences because you've been doing all your professional life But if you talk a little bit about what you've been doing sure You know Started my interest in AI as a young kid really writing AI powered chess and learned about neural networks 20 plus years ago in college had a job where I Wrote image recognition software where we actually use neural nets to identify pathology and brain CTs and My company today we use a chat GP API calls to essentially automate the process of building backends for games Me personally, I'm using chat GPT all day every day. I'm either using it to write code So I'm not gonna type a bunch of code myself, but I am going to Create some context where chat GPT can kind of understand what I want to accomplish And I'll let it, you know, write the code and I'll read the code and you know iterate with it I find that that's probably 20 30 percent faster than if I just try to write the code myself And I use it our product uses chat GPT because we're essentially automating the the the you know writing code in a way where Problems are solved without a human needing to kind of spoon feed a web interface And then personally if I need to write an important email I Find it helpful to kind of try to provide some context maybe provide my first draft and then ask GPT to Give me the next draft and some things I'll take and some things I want So yeah all day every day And I think it's an amazing thing My daughter is getting married in a week and so far resisted the temptation the coach at GPT They have it right my toast But we'll see how it goes, you know if I'm struggling I mean give it to the temptation Well, you could you could write your post and then you could say hey chat GPT What do you think of this? Maybe you write one that's too long and you want GPT to condense it? And then that's just another pair of eyes really. It's just a free opinion Yeah, I think I should be don't feel guilty about it. I Embrace it. I really do use it. I did use it to do I asked to I asked it to write a story about a Swede who doesn't like Ludifisk and if you know anything about Scandinavia, Ludifisk are One of the main holiday dishes. I had it in my lifetime. I can't say I liked it I've tried it. So I'd probably fall into that cab But it wrote this really sweet story about this person that didn't like Ludifisk You know all his All his neighbors were concerned about him and he wanted to teach him to like it It was really it was kind of a what a nice children's story. I think it was quite impressive So Susan so you're using all kinds of different ways What are some of the most advantageous ways you've used it? How do you think it's been most helpful? You know, it's it's taken a lot of the I'll call it Brunt work out of my day It will help me with things that used to take up a lot of my time And so it frees me up for more of what I would like to be doing so for example When I need to come up with content for social media marketing for my podcasts it will help me create that content and And an entire marketing plan for the episode for the week for the month, whatever it might be It'll help me Pull together the script and the the title I like clickbaity titles that people are gonna want to click on I actually use that phrase and chat GPT out Here's my topic. Help me come up with a clickbaity title. It knows what clickbaity means It will help me you do the research and pull together some of the facts especially today You know chat GPT rejoined up with being so it now has the ability to search for information on the internet So, you know, I use it for marketing purposes for creative purposes We also use it in our trainings. We use it in a variety of different ways and trainings both helping us to come up with content and materials for The training participants, but also when they are doing role play exercises They can now do role play exercises with chat GPT as their role play partners So they can either be the mediator or they can be one of the participants and chat GPT Can play all the other roles so they can try out new skills over and over again And then actually get feedback on how they did from chat GPT And then ask chat GPT to do another role play to challenge them on what they needed work on So we use it there. And then I also use it quite a bit. I actually use it in mediations. I do family mediations And so coming up with options is often the real meat of the matter you know, what are we going to do with the marital residence and Sometimes the parties exhausts their ideas and I've exhausted mine as a professional and well One of my clients likes to say let's ask the robot, you know what some other options might be And then you can ask chat GPT. Well, what are the pros and cons? So you can can you make a chart of the pros and cons of all these options? So as they said all day much like Ema, you know all day every day I find a new use for this type of capability to really augment what I'm doing whatever it is in that moment whether it's my marketing my my process working with my trainees or working with client So you kind of you have described some of the things that in your training programs that that Artificial intelligence has allowed you to do. Do you have any concern that? Hey, they're not going to need me that much anymore Once so once I get this thing down operating perfectly. Well, it's going to take over my job as trainer Is there any concern about that that that it's going to usurp or take over? Some of the tasks you do so efficiently and effectively that you're going to become obsolete You know, I don't I don't see it that way because Especially in the field in which I practice family law and just dispute resolution that personal touch and the ability to have empathy and the ability to Connect with the parties rapport trust all of those things Chat GPT I know people think that it's like the great and powerful Oz behind a curtain And there's some little man typing away because it it writes so realistically and convincingly and quickly Uh, but it's really just a and imam will be able to explain this better But it's really just a program that knows the next word to put in after the word that it just put in in a sequence and so You know, I don't believe I believe that we can use it to augment what we do I don't believe that it's going to replace what we do in working with people Which is all of the different aspects that I use it in, you know, I'm reaching out to people in marketing I'm I'm trying to connect with them through the marketing materials I'm connecting with my trainees and trying to give them tools to become better at what they do Um, and then also, you know, just in the mediation process itself But you still have to be able to go through those options with the people in a personal way Ryan, um You know as head of the law school kind of the buck stops here, you know at the end of the day You're kind of responsible for what happens in your law school Yeah, so what are some of the things that are coming to your desk? What is some of the concerns that maybe students are bringing or maybe faculty are bringing one of the kinds of things you're hearing You know, I'm hearing a lot from our faculty so we have we have a very engaged group in their forward thinking and two of our faculty members in particular Tammy ults and carolin williams have really jumped into ai both in terms of their teaching and in terms of potential impacts and In fact this week greg brockman, uh, who is the co-founder of open ai And he's also happens to be university of north dakota For more university of north dakota student and he's from tomson north dakota spoke Here on campus and generated a lot of interest in this subject Now the the concerns are coming forward or that this is going to completely transform the practice of law And that we have to change almost everything that we're doing in order to account for that So for example, we know from other research that Ai can do very well on a law school essay exam Right now roughly at a c plus level. We also know that ai can draft a brief To a b minus or to a b plus level and as the technology improves It's not going to be c plus b minus b. It's going to be a plus It's going to continue to adapt Almost to the extent where is it is it something where we have to have someone go behind it to You know check it to make sure that it's right We're going to get to a point where some of the Tasks that an associate would do are no longer needed. It's going to replace a lot of the Lot of the document review work that is currently going on. So how do we change our classes In lawyering skills and in other areas in order to account for this new technology And what is the value add for attorneys? We used to have a lot more control over both the information that people utilize to do their legal research And that the information and the process itself and that is going to be changing And so how do we as a law school change with it? Now we don't have as much concern from students on this front Mainly because we're unique and that we do not have a curve So we're not in a situation in our law school In which the students are competing against one another We still do give a class rank But it is one of the reasons why I think we have a very happy group of law students here They don't feel that pressure that comes from a curved situation So I don't think there's concerns at least none that have been expressed to me That well, someone's got access to this and they don't have access to that But we know lexus has come out with the AI And new applications and this is only going to get better And I'm really thankful that we have good folks here who are thinking about how we can adapt our curriculum And enable the lawyers of the future to be able to utilize the tool in the best possible way All of us in the legal field I've heard the story of the attorney in new york who had a chat gpt write the brief And a brief was read and that looked really polished and professional But the problem was that the case citations in there were were fantasy. They had been made up. There was there are no such cases Unfortunately, that person didn't go back through it carefully Confirmed that those were real cases that actually filed a brief with the court And there were consequences for him on both on professional licensing level Um, so yeah, I can be really helpful. But you know, as susan is expressed and iman is expressed and bright expressed It's not quite to the point where we can let it go um iman so I don't even know where to start with you because you have so much knowledge and experience But i'm just gonna let you talk a little bit about what you want to talk about. Sure. Sure. I think um When susan described how she used chat gpt. She said I I put um click baby in my context, right? So that right there tells you she's an expert She understands her field and she's using chat gpt to take care of the the tedious parts of it, but you still need the designer You know, if you want to use it effectively you have to um Go one click up, right? You're more of a designer and you're you're Outsourcing the the tedious parts of your work. Um, and it can be very effective But her expertise is still a requirement because I couldn't get chat gpt To produce a marketing plan because i'm i'm not an expert in in that field. So um, that's one case The other thing I would say is um in regards to The case in new york what is chat gpt? It is not a source of infinite knowledge So if I want to count on chat gpt to know everything in the world, it doesn't and in fact, they're very clear like We scanned the internet, you know, two years ago But even that scan the purpose wasn't to turn it into a knowledge base The purpose was to make it good at synthesizing conversation So if I wanted to build an app that that wrote legal briefs I would have it make a call to lexus texas and I would parse those and Voila, you know the problem that that person ran into wouldn't happen just as a matter of sla Just as a matter of how we wrote the application. So yes, um chat gpt isn't you know at the place where you can just let go and let it make decisions You do need to um bring in an uncertain expertise But given an application is able to insert an expertise It can be much much more powerful Than the web interface that people think of when they think about chat gpt. I think to brian's point You know, he's in the education field and how do you deal with the fact that His industry or your industry is changing so rapidly and you know what? So is mine right like programmers and attorneys are the most impacted groups by ai and it's very hard to Um predict how it's going to look in five years, but it's very easy to predict how it's going to look today Um, but if we want to go out on a limb, um, you know today It looks like people are using it to get you know, maybe a 30 percent Better use of their time 20 to 30 percent where they are able to go one click up and outsource the tedium Maybe in a year someone will write that app where Briefs are automatically generated and and all of the case law is relevant. So now going through lexus nexus isn't so you know It's not such a coincidence that you find the right case like here are the right cases Um, and you know, I don't know where it's going to be in five years, but as brian points out It's not going to get worse. It's only going to get better. So my recommendation is to really Embrace the tools that are there today and I think that you're always going to need legal minds AI cannot sustain itself. All it's doing is pulling from the vast Experiences that that that it is trained on and and so what you get is Just more efficient brief writing and I don't think there's any shortage of briefs to be written So if you could do that in in an hour as opposed to a week, I think, you know, most people would take that You know, I I find that fascinating because it's My mind goes in two directions with what iman said one is that um You still we deal with people in conflict Right, some of it's a formal dispute some of it's less formal conflict resolution situations um It's all people right. So you still have to have the the the people skills and utilize the tool And I think that that when I think about the value add Or for lawyers For for law students who are preparing to be lawyers and what we do in dispute resolution How how do you provide that value add the communication the relationship building those pieces? I think I think that's a really important piece to this And then the other thing I I think about is that these are these are tools that are going to constantly be adapting That we need to figure out how to integrate with and and learn from and and um, you know, I I think back to the old calculators Right, there's a point at which they're not interested in whether you can can do the long Multiplication and division we we can do that. So these are tools and how do we utilize those to help people make better decisions? And it's so much fun to hear Susan talk about the ways in which she integrates it and and I agree. I'm not worried that that susan's going to be out of Out of work As as she uses utilizes these tools my my view is that she's going to be even more in demand Because she's providing these opportunities For for her clients. I think it's it's really exciting Yeah, that makes me. Oh, it's Susan. No, I was just what what brian just said reminded me We were just um at the aba annual meeting and there was a sign posted There that said AI won't replace lawyers But lawyers who use AI Will replace lawyers who don't and I I believe that is very very true And so when you were talking brian about, you know, what the role for a law school curriculum is at this point I think integrating training on how to responsibly And effectively use the tool of AI in the practice is going to become something I've been doing um Some workshops hands-on workshops teaching lawyers and mediators How do you use chat gpt to support their practice and they keep selling out because It's just people want to know how the tool works that I can tell you, you know They get in the room. They're nervous. They get in the virtual room I do them online, but they're nervous about it And then I send them off into a breakout room to do the hands-on first exercise to try it And my favorite part is when they all repopulate the zoom room And they're all like kids on christmas morning just like, oh my god, isn't this and everyone gets very excited But we do need to temper all of this. It's very easy to get excited We do need to temper that excitement with these guardrails that that we need all these things that that you're talking about So it's not like you can just Run out and tell everyone to start using it in a professional sense. Yeah Well, I think that's a great point about law schools having to take some Responsibility to start introducing students to how we can use these tools and how can we ethically use these tools I've taught in two business schools and three law schools And my experience is that law schools are not nearly as innovative as business schools in terms of Getting the head of things that I'm down on the edge of emerging technologies So I think that's a good call out that law schools. We need to start being a little more enthusiastic and aggressive about tackling some of these areas Now as technology expands and improves a lot of people have celebrated it by saying that this is really a great leveler It's going to increase access to justice. It's going to put people on a level playing field There's other people say to say wait a minute You know, this is it's always about wealth and there are Institutions and individuals of great wealth. They're going to be able to concentrate power In ways that other people can't So it is is AI and technology a great Savior for the common person and a great leveler or is it a is it a threat that it's gonna It's gonna lead to a real concentration of power In the hands of people that are wealthy What do you think about that? Well, I have one thought or two thoughts on it one I would like to be the gentleman who came and spoke at bryan school recently who is I think open AI was just Valued at 40 billion dollars or 30 billion dollars something in those the nice round numbers So if you want to concentrate some wealth come up with some something like open AI, but you know, I do I do think there are some concerns out there and when we're talking about regulation This is one of the areas where it will come up I was speaking with collin rule the other day and he was telling me about We're doing a program together and his part is the jetson stuff He's always like what's coming? What's in the pipeline? What's the cool, you know stuff down the road and he was talking about You know using AI programming and he might will probably be able to speak better to this But that would be able to be predictive on what a stock was going to do Um in to a level where he's seen it sort of in in practice at a higher level than what currently exists Obviously, there's probably technology that can do that sort of predictive analysis But AI taking it to the next level Where people have access to that sort of technology will be able to Perhaps and have an advantage maybe an unfair advantage in the market if it's not regulated in any way So I just think of that as one example that perhaps no one's ever, you know Someone is going to think about people are going to just as the bad actors out there are coming up with deep fakes Using a bi in all the different ways when you come up with these fabulous technologies. We'd like to think everyone's going to be um ethical and use them in in all ways for good Bad actors are always going to find a way to use it for for bad Um, so those would be concerns without regulation Uh iman, what do you what do you think about regulation? Do we need to regulate AI? Um, do we need the legislate? Well, I um So if you I I feel like AI Amplifies things that have always been around if you look at the introduction of computers into businesses There was a you know, probably a 50x multiplier on productivity And what we didn't see is that every human being got 50 times richer what we saw was A consolidation of wealth at the top, right? And you're going to see the same thing maybe to you know Maybe at a 10x 100x magnitude relative to that That isn't an AI thing, right? The the fact is what AI does is it An artificial mind is a lot like a human mind and and the distinction is going to be less and less It learns from the world. So we we see authors saying no, you can't learn from my book and and I would say well If if you read a book and you you learned everything you learned from reading books What is the distinction between that and AI? But the truth is it takes a problem that exists in our society and it makes it much much worse, which is Um, the fact that wealth is always concentrated, right? But this is like an economic problem I think we need to solve that I think from a pure You know, look at AI and look at what it's going to do It's it's a great thing because all it does is it solves problems end of the day But um, don't I I don't want people to look at it and say, okay It's this unbiased source of truth because if you have if you feed it Um a case law, let's say during a a period of our history that was racist, right? Then and then you ask it for a verdict. It's going to give you that type of verdict, right? It's only as good as the data that that it consumes So you can't say everything AI says is unbiased It has the bias of the data that that it used to to process with but um Yeah, I think at the end of the day, I would hope that it's a forcing function to for us to look at how economies are are Are are designed, you know, I I think it forces some bigger questions And if there's contradictions in our policies that allow wealth to consolidate they will get worse But that is not an implication of what AI is that is just Uh an opportunity for us to have better policy Now, you know If you watch the national news and pay attention to politics and see what's happening to the congress right now We're pretty polarized in terms of our society and I'm not sure we're getting better. Um Is there a concern that as As the chatbots become more interactive and they're to the point now that you could have verbal conversations with them Um, that's just text conversations that it's already concerned that that the Human interaction that human exchange are going to decrease even more Which is problematic because if anything I think we need more human interaction and more Conversation between different groups and different entities. It's already concerned that this is gonna gonna make that polarization even worse Um, that we're gonna have less interaction less human interaction more more digital technology interaction and These polarization problems that we're seeing are gonna get worse and he is is that a real concern? I think what's interesting is that the polarization problem you speak to is probably a result of AI that has been um, creating advertisement and and Zeroing in on people that that it thinks think a certain way to get them to move to more extreme positions In order to get them to click, right? So I think the polarization is already a result of AI And we could look at this as probably the second Wave of AI affecting people's lives this chat gpt wave Because as of 10 years ago AI was used to optimize ads Which affects everything we see on social media which affects the way we think and we see it in election campaigns And you know it puts people in certain groups and gives them that amplification where they're not having dialogue So I think that problem you speak to the polarization caused by AI. I think it already happened You think it's going to get worse you think you think that that's I mean we're coming up in an election year Where I'm I gotta say I'm really concerned. I'm concerned about deep fakes and misinformation um Do you think that this is a problem that that I think I agree with iman that it is a problem Is it going to get worse? And if we think it's going to get worse is there anything we can do about it? Well, I think the question becomes I mean Do we need to catch up with the technology or is the technology need to catch up to us? And I I think that it's a little bit of both and so At least in the legal field We're pretty resistant to change And it's going to put some pressure on lawyers to rethink how they go about things it's going to put pressure on Law schools to think about how we assess skills. We have an xgen bar exam coming How is this going to change how we as a society deal with conflicts and dialogue and interaction? So I my prediction would be uh similar to imans. I I think I think similar to you David This is going to get worse before it gets better as we learn how to adapt to it And and sort of link the human processing of things with the artificial intelligence so that we can make good decisions Ultimately, I hope it makes us smarter Right, there's more information. It's a better tool That should be a leveler But it's it's it's a scary and kind of new world I'm not confident in our government's ability to regulate at at this point. We've we've sort of Cross the line where we politicized our bureaucracy in so many ways That it it's it's these questions are so complicated. It's it's not clear How that could look You think that we could become over dependent on AI that uh We will start looking to that technology to for solutions to things that we used to think through ourselves Number one, do you think we can become over dependent? And if we become extremely dependent, is that is that even a problem? What do you think about that? That's actually something that's occurred to me as I use it and uh, so I Pop up in the morning and need to you know, put out a post or or write an article or do something like that And instead of stretching my brain to come up with some some ideas on what to write about before I've had enough coffee I'll just have chat GPT generate 15 ideas that I might write about Um, and so I do and then I've wondered am I you know, so when am I setting myself up? I'm not testing my brain this morning. Should I be doing, you know word puzzles? So I don't Have I'm to generate a brain issues later on But I do wonder right like as we have a younger generation that we talk all the time today about how You know our use are much more used to interfacing with their devices than they are with each other I've seen my own stepkids, you know text each other well in the same room as opposed to having a conversation Um, and so wondering to that extent as we become more dependent on chat GPT being the creator or helping us be creators Will will we start to lose some of of those? um those skill sets uh As we've started to lose them because of our dependence on social media for information and Guidance and what we're going to wear today and eat tomorrow I think I feel like we're just starting our conversation. Um, but unfortunately we're beginning to run out of time So, um, uh, I guess in our closing minute or two any final thoughts that that people can share Um, maybe we'll start with brian go to iman and come back to susan You know, I I think it's exciting. I know the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy says anything created after you turn 35 is junk and you don't want any part of it and before that it's exciting, but I I think that um These are interesting tools and it's exciting to see where technology goes and I I don't think there's anything that can replace a human relationships and I'm hopeful that as we move forward will will be able to integrate in ways that are beneficial to everybody Iman, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I think um AI is inevitable, you know the fact that it's going to be a part of everybody's life and I think Uh, whether to embrace it or not. I don't think that's that it should be controversial I think, um, you know balls in our court to Really think deeply on issues because I think Um, it does amplify uh, any, uh trends in humanity that that might Um, that might need to be fixed I think it's unfortunate that these are not the problems that that we think our uh, government is in a um position to solve or as as a society that we're really paying much attention to We're probably paying more attention to polarization Uh, for the sake of polarization that then these really hard problems But I am hopeful that you know, we will Um reap some major benefits that it's going to free up human time And I think what we should hold our elected representatives to the standard is if AI is freeing up Um time and is is is driving productivity. Then why isn't that shared? Why why can A couple of people a couple of companies Um a you know small percentage reap all of that Which is essentially based on the collective knowledge of of humanity Um, so I I am uh optimistic because I think that at the end of the day We're going to save a lot of time. We're going to up level what we do And I hope that we find a way where that translates into Um parents spending time with their kids people spending time with their family and it doesn't translate into You know outsized profits You Uh quickly last word Susan. Yeah, well, I would just you know, I would back up everything that both Brian and Eamon said But I would also you know the word that that Eamon used that I really resonate with is this is exciting Uh, this is an exciting time where we have a lot of opportunity to do what we do but do it better with this assistive technology Um, unfortunately something else Brian said that really rings true is at least in our profession lawyers Not really good with change not really great for adopting new things and um, I think it's going to hurt our profession And I do think those that will adopt and do get excited Are are going to reap those benefits. We are the best people to move forward with it We have at the I mean people in our practice. We have ethical guidelines We live our lives based on certain in our practice based upon Certain ethical beliefs and and moors and so it's already built into our dna as attorneys I hope and believe To use this properly and take the time to learn how to use it properly So I encourage my colleagues out there to to get on the bus Because it's not going away Well, thank you. Thank all of you. I thought it was a great discussion Thank you to think tech Hawaii for sponsoring this program and uh, and I look forward to our next discussion I hope we can get together again