Active Listening
A little newsletter about legaltech
AI
The DOJ has arrested and charged a musician with conducting fraud via music streaming platforms, using AI-created songs and bots to “stream billions of times … to steal royalties”
The Council of Europe has negotiated and settled the first international legally binding treaty on AI, with signatories including the EU, Israel, the US and some non-EU European nations.
From Gizmodo: “Within the next several months, Nevada plans to launch a generative AI system powered by Google that will analyze transcripts of unemployment appeals hearings and issue recommendations to human referees about whether or not claimants should receive benefits”
The Australian version of the SEC conducted a test of Meta’s open source GenAI model, LLAMA, on the strength and accuracy of its summarization of documents: reviewers found human summarizers did better, and AI summarization could create more work by the need to fact-check the output
A medical debate:
Can Artificial Intelligence Speak for Incapacitated Patients at the End of Life? - Teva D. Brender, MD; Alexander K. Smith, MD; Brian L. Block, MD
Medical Science Shouldn't Platform Automating End-of-Life Care - Emily Bender
A survey of legal professionals involved in eDiscovery found that the adoption of GenAI is moving faster than those of previous technology, such as the cloud [Law360 ($) article | Report summary page from Everlaw
South Korea is dealing with an explosion of deepfake pornography, most of it targeting young women and teenaged girls
Blockchain/Digital Currency
From The Wall Street Journal ($): “Known as a stablecoin for its 1:1 peg to the dollar, tether gained early use among crypto aficionados. But it has spread deep into the financial underworld, enabling a parallel economy that operates beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement”
The FBI announced earlier this week that Americans lost $5.6 billion last year from cryptocurrency fraud and scams [AP News | FBI report]
A left/right schism is forming in the cryptocurrency community over political lobbying around the 2024 elections (Presidential and Congressional)
Data Privacy
“In Leak, Facebook Partner Brags About Listening to Your Phone’s Microphone to Serve Ads for Stuff You Mention”
“New evidence claims Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon could be listening to you on your devices”
A security researcher has found terabytes of health information for patients of Confidant Health were exposed in an unsecured database, including videos of therapy sessions [Wired ($) | SC Media]
From the airport to the grocery store, the growth of biometric systems
Miscellaneous
Following the Google anti-trust trial? A coalition of groups has put together a website to track trial updates: The United States v Google (Thanks, Natalie!)
The Washington State Bar Association has proposed a pilot program for ‘entity regulation’ that would allow businesses not run by lawyers to provide legal services in the state [WSBA pilot webpage | Draft order | ABA ($) | Law360 ($]
Long Reads
Swisher, Keith, Algorithmic Judicial Ethics (April 23, 2024). Wisconsin Law Review, Forthcoming 2024, Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper 24-19, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4803796 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4803796