The Canadian Judicial Council (CJC) has released its “Guidelines for the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Canadian Courts” (CJC Guidelines), which represent a significant step towards integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into the Canadian justice system. This article evaluates the CJC Guidelines, analyzing their strengths, weaknesses, and potential implications. Given my experience drafting similar guidelines, I offer constructive recommendations for improvement, focusing on practicality, comprehensiveness, and responsiveness to the unique challenges of AI adoption in Canadian courts.

Practicality and Usefulness of the CJC Guidelines

The CJC Guidelines are undoubtedly useful in laying a conceptual groundwork for AI adoption in . . . [more]

Introduction

In June of 2022, the Government of Canada tabled Bill C-27, the Digital Charter Implementation Act,[1] making it one of the earlier countries in the world to commence work on a national level Artificial Intelligence (AI) regulatory framework. Unfortunately, due to a complex array of factors—including criticisms of its scope, legislative delays and political instability—the bill now faces a significant risk of failure.

Bill C-27 is an omnibus bill that contains three pieces of legislation including the Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CPPA), the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act (PIDPA) and the Artificial Intelligence Data Act . . . [more]

In 2019, The Strand bookstore in New York and the building it inhabits were granted heritage status by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, and they threatened to sue the city in response (the story was widely reported, here is a story from the Guardian). The owner’s concern was that the administrative requirements associated with the designation would be onerous and that the bookstore might not be viable with them. They said this is especially relevant given the competition from online retailers like Amazon.

The Strand is still in business, but the reason this matters here is recognizing that legal . . . [more]

In part 1 of this article, we explored two different areas of the regulation of artificial Intelligence (AI) in Canada. These included existing laws of general application that apply to AI and are in force currently, as well proposed legislation that would regulate the commercial use of AI in Canada directly, known as the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA). In part 2 of this article, I will introduce a number of international developments in the regulation of AI that have an impact on Canada and introduce the primary international norms that are developing in this area. The article . . . [more]

Throughout my career, I have been attracted to and fortunate enough to work on various initiatives that push the envelope in particularly challenging and fast-moving areas. This work can sometimes induce anxiety due to its unpredictable nature and pace, but it is never boring and it is often highly rewarding. That being said, nothing I have done in the past has come close to the pace of change and potential for impact than working in the management of risk for artificial intelligence (AI) implementation.

The unique combination of the speed of advancement of AI technology combined with the slow pace . . . [more]

The last two years have seen excessive hype over the text generation functions that large language models facilitate, which doesn’t need to be remarked on here more than it already has. But, I do think it’s important to note that applications like word processors and email have been transformative for the practice of law and other knowledge work over the last 40 years, and this can be considered an expected continuation of this long term trend.

These types of tools all reduce the friction involved in creation of documents and mean that written material can be produced more quickly and . . . [more]

People’s Law School recently launched a ChatGPT-4 powered Chatbot to respond to questions posed by visitors to PLS’s website. The Chatbot is named Beagle+ and it has a very cute icon.

This PLS post describes the Chatbot and provides some examples of questions and responses. I was particularly intrigued with the assertion that it provides “helpful and empathetic” responses to peoples’ legal questions. I’m skeptical about AI’s ability to communicate effective empathy. But I was surprised to read the final example in the post:

Beagle+: Before you go, I just want to remind you to take care of

. . . [more]

The Hague Convention on the Abolition of All Forms of Legalization (known as the Apostille Convention) is now in force in Canada. Here is a link to the text of the Convention.

The practical result is that to use Canadian public documents (including confirmation of notarial status and signatures) in about 120 foreign countries, one will not have to go through the two-step process of getting the document authenticated by the province (and/or the federal government) and then ‘legalized’ by the consulate (or embassy) of the country of destination. Here is a list of the countries that are parties . . . [more]

One of the problems with generative AI is that there are so many possibilities and inconclusive data. How often does it hallucinate? Each system claims certain odds, but who is certain? I’ve been mulling over a few hypotheticals where AI has a defined failure rate and the harms are clear and predictable. Of course there are dangers to generative AI beyond the hallucination rate, but I’d like to ignore all of that to puzzle over three variables: time, harm, and benefit. Assume there are 100 private-school students and twice a year they write a term paper independently. This year a . . . [more]

The hype around generative AI and legal research continues, and it seems everyone has an opinion. There are concerns about use of AI in practice, but there is less clarity about how to approach finding sustainable solutions. It is however apparent that we need to consider the risks associated with using these systems, especially those that were not designed for certain uses. This is particularly important because general purpose tools like ChatGPT are likely to continue to be developed, and, given the complexity of navigating legal information, if they can be used with law they will be. The first solution . . . [more]

Barely six months after an explosive Goldman Sachs report predicted massive economic and employment upheaval from large language models and generative AI, the Chief Information Officer of that same company reports that his company has no actual generative AI use cases in production. Both claims, much like the title of this article, are true, false, misleading and helpful all at once. ChatGPT, Dall-E, MidJourney and the slew of open source models that followed have undoubtedly and irrevocably changed our expectations of what we can achieve through technology, meanwhile our collective ability to change behaviours has both reinforced and belied . . . [more]

Six months ago, I wrote a column about ChatGPT and other tools using large language models (“LLMs”). My aim there was to introduce this technology to readers and briefly outline intersections with legal ethics and access to justice issues. This column provides an update on this topic, including a deeper dive into legal ethics considerations.

I. What are we talking about?

My previous column included a basic overview about how ChatGPT and other tools built on LLMs work. I reshare the following two quotes as a starting point here:

A basic explanation of how ChatGPT works: “It is trained on

. . . [more]