Lawyers warned on ‘goldilocks’ regulation of AI
Law firms should have “responsible” systems in place for artificial intelligence as Australia moves towards a “goldilocks” approach on the regulation of tools such as ChatGPT, says the legal chief of tech giant Microsoft.
Tom Daemen, who leads the legal and government affairs teams for Microsoft in Australia and New Zealand, said businesses were making the mistake of treating AI like “a procurement tick box”.
He also said law firms should take an active role in the federal government’s review of AI, which kicked off in June with a discussion paper: Safe and Responsible AI in Australia.
“They want to understand the guard rails”: Tom Daemen, head of legal and government affairs at Microsoft ANZ.
Mr Daemen said he sensed “incredible optimism and incredible excitement” in law firms about tools such as ChatGPT.
“This is absolutely one of those moments, as it was 15 years ago when we started really engaging on the commercial cloud with law firms.
“They want to know. They want to understand the guard rails.”
He lauded the $20,000 AI bounty that was recently offered to staff at Gilbert + Tobin, saying his “best advice” was to get feedback from all levels of an organisation.
“Don’t view this as a top-down moment that managing partners, or whatever uber-committee, will immediately know what the answer is.
“Responsible AI is not just the responsibility of the big technology firms. It’s the responsibility of any organisation that is building and deploying its own AI solutions.
“This is a really critical point for folks to understand. I’m hearing this confusion from a number of organisations right now.
“They view responsible AI as a bit of a procurement tech tick-box, like ‘oh, does my AI vendor have a responsible AI system? Yes.
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