OpenAI invests in Androids (not kidding)

👆This is real! And it is coming this Summer!

In a delightfully ironic twist, OpenAI founder Sam Altman, who admits to being "a little bit scared" of AI technology, is now investing in androids through Norwegian robotics firm 1X.

Scoring $23.5 million in Series A2 funding, the company is set to create an army of android security guards. It seems Altman's fears haven't stopped him from embracing a future where androids and AI technology dominate. So, while we all cautiously welcome our future robotic overlords, I can't help but chuckle at the irony of it all.

Ok, time to dig in!

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Today we will glimpse these organization’s AI strategies

1. Gilbert + Tobin

2. Ross Law Firm

3. PWC Legal

4. Allen & Overy

5. Reed Smith

6. Baker McKenzie

7. Mishcon de Reya

We wil also cover:

1. a use case for Venn diagram skills illustration and job hunting

2. 5 new AI tools

3. 3 news you can use items

4. a 2016 headline that is now an AI meme of sorts

Firms/Teams & Their AI Strategies

I am collecting and curating different firm (small to big) and in-house teams’ strategy and experimentation with generative/conversational AI. I want to be able to provide you all with updates and overviews from time-to-time.

📞 Below is where I am starting. Please share your stories of what you are doing and hearing. Thank you! As always, you can reply directly to this email.

Bounties for Ideas

🎯 Gilbert + Tobin, an Australian top-tier commercial law firm, offers a $20,000 "AI bounty" to staff as it accelerates the adoption of ChatGPT technology. The firm believes that not embracing AI could result in being left behind in the industry.

Key takeaways:

• Gilbert + Tobin's staff are encouraged to submit innovative ideas for incorporating AI into their daily work, with the cash incentive to be shared among those with meritorious ideas.

• Their marketing team is already embracing AI tools to speed up and improve external writing. This is a huge service to partners!

• The $20k will be spread over the total number of ideas that meet TBD criteria - so it may be on 1 idea or dozens.

Safe Space to Play

🛝Ross Law firm rolled out an 8-weekChatGPT/generative AI training/integration project. In addition to generating pithy limericks about lawyering, creating International Court decisions on some of Darth Vader’s misdeeds, we have played with developing a prompt bank (which ChatGPT helped create), processes, standard communication templates and so much more

Key takeaways:

• To keep things safe this is all just learning and growing right now. They are seeing the impacts of hallucinations, fiction vs non-fiction, closed data corpus etc.

• In their next phase, they will go live with a limited set of obvious use cases. Culminating with team champions leading deep dives on practice and process specific opportunities.

📡 🚨 Note: Quinn Ross, founder of the firm, and I are recording a podcast tomorrow that breaks down their 8-week roadmap and details how they are approaching this. Our hope is that it will serve as an example for others. Stay tuned!

Go Big or Go Home

💰PwC partners with AI-powered legal startup Harvey to enhance its legal services with generative AI technology.

Key takeaways include:

• Generative AI to help PwC's legal professionals in areas like due diligence, regulatory compliance, and contract analysis, improving efficiency and insights.

• PwC is testing use cases and developing proprietary AI models with Harvey to create customized products and services for internal and external use.

• Despite the benefits of AI, PwC maintains that legal professionals will play a crucial oversight role, emphasizing a "human-led and technology-enabled" approach.

• PWC announced a $1 billion investment into AI across its entire organization to expand and scale its AI offerings.

🌐 AI startup Harvey.AI has partnered with global law firm Allen & Overy to automate legal document drafting and research using OpenAI's GPT software. Harvey.ai (which freshly raised a $21M Series A) aims to develop tailored AI-driven products for different law firms and specific client matters. Allen & Overy believes that not adopting generative AI will put law firms at a competitive disadvantage in the future.

Key takeaways:

• Harvey operates in multiple languages for A&O’s 3,500 lawyers across 43 offices.

• Generative AI has the potential to save time and improve efficiency in legal work, but human lawyers will still need to review AI-assisted outputs.

Role-based

👩‍💻Reed Smith, a global law firm, has created a senior-level role of director of applied AI to oversee the development and adoption of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI tools.

Key takeaways:

• Reed Smith will eventually develop and teach its own large language models.

• They have a list of over 100 potential use cases to test and are currently running a few such as on one of their docketing systems and in the discovery arena.

🧪 Baker McKenize has been investing in the machine learning and AI space for a couple of years now. Baker McKenzie's Machine Learning Practice has been using large language models (LLMs) as the heart of the work the firm has been doing, with their focus on the broad, strategic end of enhancing the value of their lawyers' legal judgment.

Key takeaways:

• Law firms need to be intentional about social justice and scaling their pro bono impact using ML.

• Baker McKenzie has partnered with ADAPT, a consortium of leading technology companies, to improve inclusion, diversity, and equity in patent practice.

🕵️‍♀️UK law firm Mishcon de Reya recruited a GPT specialist to explore applications of ChatGPT and GPT-3 in legal use cases. The firm sees the release of ChatGPT as signaling a new phase of widespread access to large language models.

Key takeaways:

• The recruitment of GPT specialists indicates an interest in leveraging AI and natural language processing models for legal use cases and beyond, including finance and marketing.

• While AI is not new in legal, conversational or generative AI is, which requires a new degree of AI-related skills.

Use Case Venn Thyself A New Job

So, yesterday I needed to "Venn" myself. What's that all about? Great question!

I wanted to share my background, skills, and strengths in a straightforward manner. Sure, I could've written it down or whipped out my resume, but that wasn't the right fit since I wasn't job hunting. Don't worry, I'll touch on that approach later on.

Instead, I aimed to showcase how my unique abilities matched up perfectly with an organization's exciting challenge or opportunity. Time was of the essence, so I needed a compact yet powerful way to convey my message—cue the visuals!

A Venn diagram, with its overlapping circles, is a fantastic graphic to illustrate connections and shared qualities.

So, I sketched one out by hand. It's always tough to strike the right balance between modesty and confidence when talking about yourself. Thankfully, I had a solid framework. To double-check my work, I turned to ChatGPT for assistance. But how?

▶︎▶︎PROMPT

I am going to paste my resume below. I would like you to use the framework of a Venn Diagram to identify 3 unique areas that represent my skills, experience, passion, and capabilities. I am doing this to help discover ideas on where my unique history makes me an ideal fit.

Here is my resume: [paste your resume]

It turned a wonderful response. One second and I will share it with you.

I wanted to go further and ask what might be at the center of the Venn - as in what I am optimally designed to do?

▶︎▶︎PROMPT

Thank you. Now I need ideas on what might be depicted as the center of the diagram - where all three circles converge.

▼▼ RESPONSE

Ok, here is what it responded to both prompts with.

I have to say - these are pretty darn good. There were some differences from what I came up with on my own but from just reviewing my resume, these could be considered spot on.

Here are some use cases and examples where doing this might be helpful and/or differentiating:

Traditional Use Cases:

1. Networking events: Showcasing your unique blend of skills and experiences in a concise, memorable way to make a lasting impression.

2. Job fairs: Using a Venn diagram to quickly convey your suitability for various positions or industries, attracting the attention of potential employers.

3. Elevator pitches: Illustrating the intersections of your background, expertise, and goals to make your pitch more engaging and visually appealing.

4. Personal websites or portfolios: Incorporating a Venn diagram into your online presence to give visitors a quick snapshot of who you are and what you can do.

5. Professional development or performance reviews: Visually demonstrating your growth and potential to supervisors or mentors.

6. Team building: Identifying commonalities among team members to foster collaboration and understanding.

Unconventional Use Cases:

1. Social media profiles: Showcasing your unique blend of professional and personal interests to create an authentic online persona that resonates with your audience.

2. Volunteering or community engagement: Using a Venn diagram to demonstrate how your skills and passions align with a specific cause or organization.

3. Personal growth and goal setting: Mapping the intersections of your passions, strengths, and aspirations to identify areas for development or new pursuits.

4. Mentorship: Guiding mentees in creating their own Venn diagrams to help them discover their unique strengths and areas of opportunity.

5. Creative collaboration: Sharing your Venn diagram with potential collaborators to find common ground and inspire new projects.

6. Icebreakers: Drawing a Venn diagram to find common interests among new acquaintances, sparking conversation and building connections.

How to use for Job Hunting

Taking what I got from ChatGPT as to what would be in the center of my Venn, I chose one that most appealed to me.

I then went to Bing Chat (remember it is connected to the internet) to find job openings or consulting gigs that might be looking for someone like me.

▶︎▶︎PROMPT

Hi Bing. I have a description of a role that I would be a strong candidate for. I am not sure if any organizations are looking for this skillset and focus right now. Can you conduct a search for both employment opportunities as well as consulting opportunities that are directly on point with this? Here is the role description: [paste one of the roles ChatGPT provided]

▼▼ RESPONSE

Now I am not job hunting but if I were this might be a good start. I did not work to fine tune this. If I wanted to I might focus on geography, specific job sites or websites that might be more specialized, certain keywords, etc.

Not AI, But to Finish this Use Case

To make the actual visual I used something I find a bit easier and unique from using PowerPoint or GoogleSlides. I used excalidraw.com.

You can do many things with this web-based visual design tool and most are super easy to figure out.

Anyway, to end this I will share my Venn. Click on it to go to the actual diagram in excalidraw.

Misc Tools & Resources: 

News you can Use: 

▶︎ Bipartisan Push to Regulate AI: Privacy Rights & Fair Decisions in Focus

Congress faces growing pressure to regulate artificial intelligence, with the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) as a likely bipartisan solution. The ADPPA focuses on data privacy rights and regulating AI systems while receiving support from tech giants like Microsoft and Salesforce. Key takeaways include:

1. The ADPPA addresses discriminatory AI output in business settings and prohibits data usage that discriminates based on factors like sex, race, or disability.

2. Companies would be required to submit design evaluations and impact assessments for AI systems used in consequential decisions, such as credit, housing, and employment.

▶︎ High School Teacher's Free Database Fuels AI Boom: LAION Unleashes Global Potential

German high school teacher Christoph Schuhmann founded LAION (Large-scale AI Open Network), the world's largest free AI training dataset with over 5 billion image-text pairs. Key takeaways include:

1. The data's significant impact on the AI industry, with companies like Google using it.

2. The legal and ethical questions raised by LAION's data gathering methods.

▶︎ AI-Powered Dori Unveils Private Market Transaction Tools, Raises $2M Seed Funding

Dori emerges from stealth, offering a generative AI platform for private market transactions aimed at founders, lawyers, and investors. Investors include VC firms and “a number of ‘prominent’ corporate attorneys.” Key takeaways include:

• The launch of three products targeting venture capital transactions:
  1. a convertible instrument platform for startups,
  2. preferred stock financing automation for attorneys, and
  3. investment summarization and insights for investors.

In the Meme Time:

Not a meme per se but could be. This is from 2016! Seems we are still trying to replace all the lawyers some 7 years later.

That's a wrap for today. Stay thirsty & see ya next time! If you want more, be sure to follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

DISCLAIMER: None of this is legal advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not legal advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any legal decisions. Please /be careful and do your own research.