Talk Justice, an LSC Podcast: Preventing Harm Amidst the AI Hype
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Carl Rauscher
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WASHINGTON– Legal and tech experts come together to discuss generative AI on the latest episode of LSC's “Talk Justice” podcast, released today. Jason Tashea hosts the conversation with Afua Bruce, Principal of ANB Advisory Group; Kevin De Liban, founder of Techtonic Justice; and Keith Porcaro, Reuben Everett Senior Lecturing Fellow at Duke Law School.
De Liban’s work at TechTonic Justice focuses on ensuring low-income people are not unjustly losing work, housing, schooling and benefits due to AI decision-making. He previously worked for 12 years at Legal Aid of Arkansas, and while there, he assisted clients who had suddenly had their state-supported medical care cut. Several of these clients were living with permanent disabilities, and not due to any change in their health, the state significantly reduced the hours of home care they could receive. It turned out that this was the result of a newly implemented algorithmic decision-making system.
Government agencies, employers and landlords have been using algorithmic decision-making tools to make decisions that impact people’s lives for decades, De Liban explains, but the recent hype around AI could make these practices more widespread.
“The evolution in technology has also brought about an evolution in the organization of societal resources and a legitimacy to this sort of automated decision-making that is intensifying the use of these technologies for basically unjust means,” De Liban says. “If you're low-income, any introduction of sort of AI or algorithmic decision-making is bad news for you.”
Bruce, a computer engineer, founded the consulting firm ANB Advisory Group to support organizations across all sectors that are developing, implementing or funding responsible data and technology. Speaking on the topic of whether people should trust AI, she explains that AI tools are always a product of designers and implementers.
“I think that what is important to remember as we talk about greater use and greater adoption of AI tools is that AI is ultimately still designed by people—even though AI learns patterns from data, the data is provided by people, the parameters by which the AI system can learn are also provided by people. The ways AI tools are governed and people use them in decision-making as some of my co-guests today here have already articulated, is also decided by people,” says Afua. “And so, I put the onus more on the designers and the people making decisions about how and when AI tools are being used rather than individual end users.”
At Duke Law School, Porcaro teaches classes on law and technology and researches the future of legal advice and the organizations who fill unmet demand for critical services. Currently, Porcaro’s team is doing an audit on an AI tool that Legal Aid of North Carolina is using to deliver customized legal information.
“I think it's really important that we—both as a field, but also as professionals with responsibility to our client—develop really robust methodologies to figure out if any of this is actually working,” says Porcaro.
Talk Justice episodes are available online and on Spotify, YouTube, Apple and other popular podcast apps. The podcast is sponsored by LSC’s Leaders Council.