AI Update: Keeping Up With AI Laws, How ChatGPT Changed Silicon Valley, Defining AI For Disclosures

As AI technology continues to rapidly develop, lawmakers across the world are struggling to keep pace, according to the New York Times. “Nations have moved swiftly to tackle A.I.’s potential perils, but European officials have been caught off guard by the technology’s evolution, while U.S. lawmakers openly concede that they barely understand how it works,” the Times reports.

Also from the New York Times, a new investigation into how OpenAI’s ChatGPT release in 2022 “changed Silicon Valley forever,” pushing tech giants like Google and Meta to fast-track their own AI-based projects despite OpenAI viewing the release of GPT-3.5 as more of a research strategy than a true product release.

While it has become increasingly common for law firms to disclose when they use AI, there still isn’t a universal definition for what makes an AI tool an AI tool, Legaltech News reports. While some might limit the definition to newer technologies like generative AI, artificial intelligence does play a key role in many different tools — including much of the Microsoft platform utilized by many firms.

California lawmakers may be the first to create “major policy roadblocks” for Silicon Valley’s AI boom, Politico reports, citing at least a dozen bills currently aimed at combating what the state legislature sees as the greatest threats AI poses to society. “Generative AI is a potentially world-changing technology for unimaginable benefit, but also incalculable cost and harm,” said Jason Elliott, Governor Gavin Newsom’s Chief of Staff.

Google’s new Gemini AI model, which can scrape not only text but also audio, video, and images to inform its output, may now be the most promising competitor against the dominance of OpenAI’s ChatGPT over the generative AI space, Wired reports. The “natively multimodal” model is a big step towards creating AI that interacts with the world in a manner similar to a human brain, according to Demis Hassabis, an executive who led the development of Gemini.

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.