On Nov. 6 I attended a panel presentation at the University of La Verne College of Law and Public Service: “AI and Gen AI in Law and Public Service: Current State and Future Outlook.”
Almost everything about this event was in my wheelhouse. I am a law journalist fresh off service on the Redlands City Council. I was interested in all of it.
On top of that, my friend Steve Haskins of McCune Law Group was one of the three presenters.
This event was part of the Curt Hagman Distinguished Lecture Series.
Hagman is a San Bernardino County Supervisor. He and I befriended sitting next to each other during meetings when we served together on the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority and in the Southern California Association of Governments, (he is still there for both; I sure miss being on both of those boards and exchanging sotto voce comments with him.)
He has a contagious zeal for technology and its application in governance.
In his introduction, Hagman said, “If you’re doing the same thing you were doing five years ago, you’re doing it wrong.”
Spoiler alert: Haskins, who spoke last, was likely glad to have been so temporally removed from this introduction.
I have a small screed on why we don’t have the luxury of declining to keep up with technology innovations.
I was the editor of the Redlands Daily Facts in 2011 when the general mandate for print publications was to start thinking about our online presence. People – frankly, old people – would call to yell at me, “I don’t do those internets!” They were haughty about it, proud.
I imagined if they had lived in a previous era they would have rejected the telephone or electricity.
I absolutely relate to resenting having to learn new things, resisting change, but I also get that every time we evolve, we have to accept that the world is not going back. Life without the internet is not gearing for its big comeback.
We have to get out of our comfort zones and learn the new. I can’t imagine how those people who called me to proclaim their non-wired superiority are currently functioning. You can hardly pay bills, watch television or buy a house without an email address.
That said, I have rejected AI entirely. I showed up to this event knowing nothing about it, having never used it or known where to find it to try. I am myself an old person.
The expert panel included San Bernardino County Fire Chief Dan Munsey and public administration artificial intelligence doctoral student Annie Bui.
Munsey (“Stop thinking it’s humans against robots.”) and Bui gave riveting presentations that made me excited for the future of wildfire fighting and running cities, but for the Follow Our Courts audience, I’m going to jump to Haskins’ presentation.
I showed up expecting a funny, interesting and thought-provoking time, and that’s what we got.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that computers will disrupt the industry,” he said.
Amid movie references and smart humor, he conveyed the message that the legal industry was “super far behind” in being transformed by AI.
I wish I could give you better reporting on his presentation. I was so enjoying his Haskinsness that I failed to take good notes. I took mediocre notes.
“Lawyers sell expertise,” he said. “AI provides thoughts.”
He expects AI will expose inefficiencies in the industry, and set a cognitive minimum (“If you can’t do it faster than a computer…”).
And it will lay biases bare.
“AI threatens to challenge some things we’re routinely wrong about,” Haskins said.
Well here’s one thing we’ve sure been wrong about:
