104 | 🔥 🚜 AI Laser Weed Killer

In today’s Brainyacts we:

1. use generative AI to revive negotiation skills

2. prepare for a weeklong Germany design challenge

3. ask 11 questions on gen AI and negotiation

4. 🚨 introduce Brainyact Deep-dive Executive Briefs

5. ask if an AI weed killer replacing jobs is good or bad

6. get an Open AI iOS mobile app update

7. learn Twitter is getting data pillaged

8. get a boatload of news you can use

👋 to new subscribers!

To read previous posts, click here.

An ongoing dialogue in the Brainyacts Ask Me Anything Slack channel inspires the following essay.

Thank you to Ret. Judge Ralph Artigliere, In-house counsel Jason Anderman, and others for the frothy insights!

🙊 🗣️ Unleashing the Power of Generative AI in Legal Negotiation: A New Horizon of Opportunities

In this digital age, communication has morphed from in-person interactions and phone conversations to instantaneous digital exchanges. While this has revolutionized our access to information, it also seems to have stunted the development of interpersonal skills within the legal profession.

I can attest to this as can any parent of a teenager. My wife and I work diligently to ensure our daughter can look someone in the eyes and carry on a conversation. Trust me, many of her peers simply cannot. But they can text and emoji like no other! As law school faculty, I have seen this creep into the behavior of students too. What is the result of all of this within the legal profession? A notable deterioration in negotiation and face-to-face advocacy.

The fading art of traditional communication methods in the modern legal era has raised a crucial question regarding the cultivation of advanced negotiation skills in both law school and Continuing Legal Education (CLE) programs. Despite the significant role of negotiation in various legal practices, these skills are often underemphasized, leading to a considerable gap in the legal profession's skillset. This is where the potential of Generative AI (GenAI) surfaces, offering innovative and creative solutions.

GenAI could be harnessed to offer valuable negotiation training specifically tailored to legal practitioners, simulating countless real-world scenarios. It can provide real-time opposing responses and counter-strategies, and crucially, insights into the outcomes of these negotiation strategies. This immersion and real-time feedback can help lawyers develop and sharpen their negotiation skills effectively and efficiently.

Moreover, GenAI could be programmed to generate various personas, reflecting the wide range of personalities one may encounter in legal negotiations. This way, lawyers can practice negotiating with different types of people, from the amicable and cooperative to the stubborn and confrontational.

Further, GenAI could utilize machine learning to analyze historical data from thousands of past cases and negotiations, deriving patterns, successful strategies, and common pitfalls. By exposing lawyers to these insights, they can learn from the successes and failures of the past, fine-tuning their negotiation skills without the harsh consequences of trial-and-error in real-world cases.

A practical application lies in Florida's small claims courts. Here, free mediators assist in resolving Landlord-Tenant (LT) disputes and other small claims before the case is heard by a judge. GenAI could play a transformative role in these courts by informing unrepresented parties of their rights, guiding them through the process, and advising them on how to present their case effectively.

An innovative idea would be the creation of an AI 'legal companion', a digital assistant that could be accessed via a smartphone or computer. This 'legal companion' could be programmed to deliver legal information in an easy-to-understand, non-legalese language. It could answer user questions, help draft documents, and even provide recommendations for negotiation strategies, all while staying within the bounds of providing legal information rather than legal advice. Ret. Judge Artigliere’s first-hand experience points out the crucial challenge of providing comprehensive information to unrepresented parties without crossing into the realm of legal practice. But this can be managed.

In this rapidly digitizing world, while we grapple with challenges, the potential opportunities are transformative. We must not allow the art of negotiation to diminish; instead, we should seize innovative technologies like GenAI to rejuvenate this vital skill. By embracing GenAI in legal education and practice, we can enhance our legal systems, making them more accessible, effective, and equitable.

And I plan to 👇

🇩🇪 🛫 Next week, I am off to Hamburg, Germany where I will be teaching Legal Business Design Thinking at Bucerious Law School’s Summer Program. I will have 25+ students for a week.

I will be splitting the class into teams and presenting them with a design challenge to tackle throughout the week that looks to embed generative AI into legal education or the profession itself.

Upon the suggestion of the Brainyacts AMA Slack group, I will likely incorporate negotiation in some way into the challenge.

Stay tuned as I will report back.

Questions to consider on this topic:

1. Could the rise of GenAI in legal education lead to a new paradigm where traditional soft skills like negotiation are taught differently?

2. Given the potential of GenAI to teach and simulate negotiation strategies, what are the ethical implications of relying on AI in shaping legal practitioners' negotiation styles and tactics?

3. How could GenAI help ensure that crucial interpersonal skills like negotiation are not lost in the increasingly digital and AI-centric world of legal practice?

4. Could the integration of GenAI lead to a broader democratization of legal services, particularly for unrepresented parties in legal disputes?

5. If GenAI systems could provide comprehensive and accurate legal information, what would be the impact on the current legal aid systems and self-represented litigants?

6. Can AI 'legal companions' maintain the delicate balance between providing legal information and avoiding unauthorized practice of law?

7. How might GenAI's ability to analyze and learn from historical legal data transform the future of legal negotiations?

8. Considering the broad spectrum of personalities and negotiation styles, how effective would a GenAI system be in preparing lawyers for real-world negotiations?

9. In the face of a potential GenAI revolution in the legal sector, what new skills will future lawyers need to complement their AI counterparts?

10. If AI were to take a more significant role in mediation and negotiation, would that affect the human element inherent to these processes? Would humans be needed at all?

11. What safeguards should be put in place to ensure that GenAI, despite its numerous benefits, doesn't inadvertently erode the essential human touch in legal negotiations and settlements?

🤿 🧐 Brainyacts Deep-Dive Executive Research Briefs

It is time to begin a new Brainyacts project. 

In edition #99 I shared my plan to begin producing monthly deep-dive reports. My intention is for them to be executive research briefs that offer a profound exploration of emerging trends and challenges within the intersection of generative AI and the global legal markets.

These are not just another boring report, but a participatory research platform, where your contributions help shape the future of market dialogue.

This tool will be designed with legal leaders, legal business professionals, entrepreneurs, and forward-thinking people in mind. It should be a foolproof and user-friendly guide to understanding the complex dynamics of legal markets and generative AI.

We will uncover the current and future trends that could redefine your business strategy, identify profitable projects, and make informed decisions.

Each Brief:

1. Dissects a specific theme or challenge, going far beyond surface-level observations.

2. Builds framework-based reports, bringing a structured approach to the analysis.

3. Explains why the topic matters, establishing real-world relevance and urgency.

4. Highlights compelling opportunities, giving a clear direction for potential initiatives.

5. Identifies the core problems being solved by market players, shedding light on innovative approaches.

6. Summarizes key players, offering a concise overview of the who's who in the market.

7. “Red-teams” ideas, to consider and counter objections and criticism.

8. Predicts future trends, based on informed and thoughtful research.

9. Outlines market risks, making you aware of potential pitfalls and challenges.

But this report is not just about me talking to you. It's a conversation. It's a collaborative effort where your ideas, insights, and information will help shape the narrative.

As we stand on the precipice of significant shifts in the legal and AI realm, participation is progress. I invite you to join me on this exciting journey and lend your voice to the transformation.

And if you contribute, you share in the recognition by being directly attributed to the briefing report itself.

Here is our first report topic:

👩‍🏫 📚 Deep-Dive Executive Briefing: Legal Education & Learning in the Generative Age

The landscape of legal education is changing, and we have an exciting opportunity to shape its future. As we stand on the precipice of this shift, let's remember that a key element of progress is participation. If you have ideas, insights, or information about the ongoing transformation in legal education, from law school to practice, we urge you to share them with us.

In the context of evolving education practices and the potential impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI), we are particularly interested in hearing about innovative projects, platforms, programs, and people who are making strides in reimagining what legal education could look like in the age of generative AI.

• Have you come across a new AI-driven instruction model?

• Is there a budding legal tech initiative that caught your eye?

Think beyond law school (such as replacing law school) as well as into the continued life-long learning of a legal professional –where is, or where will, generative AI make an impact?

• How can the personalization and accessibility of AI platforms support hands-on, mentoring?

• How is CLE being improved or disrupted using generative AI?

• How is the role of professional development and learning within legal teams changing?

• What are the new tools, methods, and platforms available to deliver educational experiences?

• What new skills must current and future lawyers be taught and who is doing it now?

The report is not constrained to just these questions – these are starters for us to get going.

If you are part of or aware of any related endeavors, we want to hear about your experiences.

Remember, your shared ideas could potentially shape the future of legal education and practice. Let's collaborate to make legal education more affordable, accessible, adaptable, and efficient in responding to our fast-paced, technologically driven world. Our collective efforts could revolutionize legal education and contribute towards a more just, accessible, and efficient legal system.

To contribute, please send me your ideas, resources, news, or any relevant information by replying to this email. Alternatively, engage with me on Twitter (@jkubicki) or LinkedIn, where I encourage open discussion and collaboration.

This is more than a call to action – it's an invitation to join a movement dedicated to shaping the future of legal education.

Your voice matters. Let's make it count!

📑 🔮 Is this good job displacement or bad?

First off, who wants to slather their salad with a side of harmful pesticides? Not me, thank you very much! Secondly, we're talking about a machine that could give James Bond tech-envy - packing 150W CO2 lasers accurate up to the width of a Nerds candy (or half a pencil eraser)!

But wait, there's more! This crop-zapping wizard not only boasts AI smarts, but it's also got the autonomy of a teenager with a new driving license. Ready to take on the Herculean task of replacing 70 field workers, it coolly cruises through crops, playing a high-stakes game of 'good plant, bad weed.' A little weed pops up? Zap! Be gone! Who needs field workers when you have a weed-whacking wonder-machine on wheels?

🏃‍♂️ 📥 OpenAI APP on iOS Update

If you haven’t been using the OpenAI official app for your iPhone you haven’t been living. I literally take walks to think all the time and used to have to capture voice notes or send myself an email. Now I just open the app and speak to it - while walking (even tried it running a few times and it worked).

What do I use it for?

• riffing & brainstorming

• organizing my thoughts

• finishing or progressing an idea

• creating a to-do list for me

• writing an email based on my talking points

• turning my thoughts into research questions

• breaking big and incomplete ideas into discrete topics

• so many things.

Now you can use the app with it connected to Bing. This option has been available on the web version for Plus users for weeks. Now it comes to the mobile app.

Just open the app and got to settings. You will see the option there.

✋🛑 Twitter getting “data pillaged”!

In an effort to stop unauthorized web scraping (see more on this in the news below) presumably by voracious learning models (LLMs), Elon is making it a bit more difficult to access Twitter feeds by non-users.

This just shows how training data and data owners/custodians are going to battle it out.

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.8