An industry academia dialog on opportunities and challenges for AI

Opportunities like lawyer bots, bail bits, pro bono legal tech were discussed

VC NALSAR and Director IIITH chaired the roundtable

HYDERABAD, India, April 15, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- IIIT Hyderabad hosted a roundtable meeting on AI in legal, jointly with NALSAR. A curated session on the possible scope of Application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Legal and Judicial System in India, opportunities and challenges.

The confluence session of law firms, policy think tanks, NALSAR faculty, IIITH faculty and startups deliberated on the use cases, problems, challenges, and the potential solution possibilities. With focus on four dimensions: AI as a supporting tool in the practice of law; to adhere to due process of law; Should AI Practice Law?; AI in delivering Judgements?

The roundtable was chaired by Prof. Srikrishna Deva Rao, Vice Chancellor, NALSAR University, and Prof. P. J. Narayanan, Director IIITH. Panelists included Professors from IIITH, NALSAR & IIT Kanpur, law leaders from Samvad Partners, policy and community groups OpenNyAI & CDPP, and startup subtl.ai. Discussions covered problems, solutions, constraints, and technology challenges.

Panel identified AI use cases in Legal Research, Document and Content Discovery Process, Contract Drafting and Review activities. AI and NLP play a crucial role in building the language processing tools in understanding the substance and implications of key words searches and contract language.  

Prof. Srikrishna Deva Rao, Vice Chancellor, NALSAR University stressed the importance of academic interactions between IIITH Hyderabad and NALSAR should lead to academic/research collaborations educating lawyers and technologists together. He expressed that he strongly believes technology will enhance justice for everybody but would not replace/substitute human jurisprudence. Also suggesting that lawyers should learn program development, learn about AI/ML, Data science. He advocated small courses for lawyers in documents review, judgement review and contract analysis. He talked about legal accountability in the use of AI systems in the legal systems. He also noted the bias and potential for psychological and emotional harm in the use of AI.

Prof P J Narayanan, Director, IIIT Hyderabad, in his opening remarks said, "It is good to see the AI Tech world and people from law coming together" He noted how Mr. F. C. Kohli was concerned about backlogs in the Indian court system, noted the diversity in the legal system and the need to address the problems from the basics. He also commented on how it has become possible for AI systems to help significantly in the legal process but warned about over reliance on AI systems cautioning about biases inherent in these systems.

The deliberations will be detailed in a white paper to be published shortly.

About IIIT Hyderabad: The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH) is an autonomous research university founded in 1998 that focuses on the core areas of Information Technology, such as Computer Science, Electronics and Communications, and their applications in other domains through inter-disciplinary research that has a greater social impact. Some of its research domains include Visual Information Technologies, Human Language Technologies, Data Engineering, VLSI and Embedded Systems, Computer Architecture, Wireless Communications, Algorithms and Information Security, Robotics, Building Science, Earthquake Engineering, Computational Natural Sciences and Bioinformatics, Education Technologies, Power Systems, Quantum Computing and Quantum Information, IT in Agriculture and e-Governance.

Website: www.iiit.ac.in

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