AI Update: An Executive Order, AI Integration Plateau, Creativity Sets Innovators Apart

The White House has issued a new executive order on artificial intelligence that will, among other measures, require companies to “report to the federal government about the risks that their systems could aid countries or terrorists to make weapons of mass destruction,” according to the New York Times. Additional analysis is available from Politico, the Brookings Institute, the Conversation, and Thomson Reuters Legal. The Columbia Journalism Review also does a great job of placing the order in the broader context of global AI regulation. You can read the full executive order here.

A new survey from Bloomberg Law suggests that the legal industry’s rush to embrace AI may be slowing down, though the very slight decrease in the number of attorneys who reported that they’ve used AI this fall compared to this summer shouldn’t be taken as a sign that AI won’t continue to dominate legal tech.

As AI-based legal tech solutions become more commonplace, creative and unique applications of AI tools will set the most innovative firms apart from the rest, Legaltech News reports. “It is nothing new that all the law firms have been working with the same set of Legos. But the difference is with those same pieces, how do you use them? And how much benefit do you derive?,” says Wendy Curtis, chief innovation officer at Orrick.

According to a new press release, Thomson Reuters will continue to step up its involvement in generative AI with additional investments of $100 million and moves to upskill the company’s current workforce. The announcement follows the June 2023 acquisition of AI legal tech company Casetext and comes just ahead of the launch of AI components for Thomson Reuters’ own Westlaw Precision platform.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s comments at an international AI safety summit in the UK reflected an unnecessary juxtaposition of innovation and regulation, an editorial published in the journal Nature argues. The editorial’s authors point out that there is a “wealth of literature on regulation” and cite how researchers at Google DeepMind have suggested turning to lessons learned from the civil nuclear technology space.

Ethan Beberness is a Brooklyn-based writer covering legal tech, small law firms, and in-house counsel for Above the Law. His coverage of legal happenings and the legal services industry has appeared in Law360, Bushwick Daily, and elsewhere.