Entry #3 - The importance of the Author's voice and the ineffable
December 5, 2023
First, a common trope:
If you were to raise an owl without prior experience,
should you try to learn how to raise an owl first,
or just go find an owl egg and figure it out.
This journal entry is about my owl robot.
Yes, I use a robot. More than one in fact.
In hindsight, it took me too long to realize it in the first place.
We are better at different things, sometimes bad for each other, but mostly have a productive relationship.
As far as I can tell…
But there are some things I will just do myself, because what else am I going to do?
What is it that I do? Good question.
Often when I am trying to explain to someone what I do all day, I start small:
“I type a lot.”
It’s a basic joke, but quite effective.
Far better than:
“I can’t really tell you all that much about what I do, sorry.”
It’s much better to start with a modest joke.
It also isn’t a lie, which we lawyers can’t do remember (unless it’s “bluster”, whatever that is).
I actually do type a lot, sometimes all day, and about all kinds of things.
And I care a lot about how I type. I enjoy the act of typing, especially with music. I enjoy choosing the font, paragraph spacing, nerd stuff.
Overall, I enjoy thinking about how the words are going to appear to the reader.
I also really enjoy reading, especially about interesting words.
Some words I find really interesting are: Proprioception, Consciousness, Percipient, Qualia, and Sonder.
Another patent word that is interesting is “lexicographer” (a person who defines words, sometimes new ones).
I guess I should start saying:
“I type a lot, and I read a lot of words (preferably interesting ones, sometimes new ones).”
I’m also trying to learn more about linguistics.
It seems interesting, I’m just not great at it.
But a robot is helping explain it to me.
As far as I can tell…
At a high level, it seems important because language is a “medium through which thoughts, ideas, and knowledge are expressed and communicated.”
So at this point I guess I should start saying:
“I type a lot, I read a lot of words (preferably interesting ones, sometimes new ones), because it’s how thoughts, ideas, and knowledge are expressed and communicated.”
Much better.
Now, because I like words so much, you would think that I would be really worried about some new word robot that is better at words than I am.
You’d be right. It’s fascinating.
In fact, I am a bit surprised at how fast it happened.
But in hindsight, I guess I’ve been contributing to the creation of these robots since I was a kid.
I got my first internet connected computer in the 90’s.
Since then, I’ve gone from:
watching a song download for a full day on Napster,
to:
streaming a song over cellular to my phone in the middle of the mountains, while simultaneously playing that song over the speakers in my car via Bluetooth, while that same car is (mostly) driving itself, and also while I am having fictitious conversations with a word robot just to see what it will say, while using a different search robot to make sure the word robot isn’t just making things up (or in patent speak – “acting as its own lexicographer”).
And it is interesting how it works.
As far as I can tell.
According to it, it is pre-trained on a lot of words, and from those words, it learned how probable a string of more words would be, in response to any new words I ask it.
Quite the trick. It’s “neural network” computational architecture must really work.
But hey, my neural network works to, and is more complex!
If anything, the words I chose to provide my word robot are just as important as the pretty ones it sends back to me.
Don’t get me wrong, it often does have the “best” words, in the “best” order.
Very informative, if occasionally forgivably inaccurate words.
Its words are impressive.
They’ve improved my words, especially my science words.
Its words would otherwise be a death sentence in student loans.
But you know what?
Sometimes, I don’t like its words.
And that is a big relief – because its words are different than my words.
And you know what else, the systems I have access to also have an obvious design flaw: they are only trained on language, and not trained on the “ineffable” aspects of being a human.
Because at the end of the day, lawyers designed a pretty good Turing test – a jury of your peers.
Convincing a group of twelve strangers of your perspective is hard for humans. I don’t think robots are there yet, if they ever will be.
How do you teach a robot to communicate “ineffable” things like sincerity of belief, empathy of condition, and trustworthiness.
A jury of peers seems to accomplish that feat by looking real people in the eyes.
Maybe we should do that more.
And even though we human attorneys can look people in the eyes, we still have rules to make sure we tell the truth.
Apart from Rule 4.1, another famous one (out of a different rule book) is Rule 11. You’d be surprised at how many rule books there actually are.
For non-lawyers, Rule 11 means that I get in big trouble if the words I say to a court are wrong and I don’t fix them (regardless of if I wrote them, or my word robot did).
Some (New York) attorneys already graciously served as examples for the application of this rule, and have been “sanctioned” for relying on their word robot’s wrong answer.
“Sanction” – a delightfully hypocritical word. In this case, it’s the bad definition.
And that makes sense, because a major goal of the court system is to accurately inform people, so they can make the best decision, regardless of the source of the accurate information.
In the end, I am still grateful to my robots.
One helped me create a website in short work, with little to no experience.
One helped me with my logo.
One keeps me more informed, educated, and on my writing toes (at a fraction the cost of traditional education).
And another has helped eliminate a substantial amount of traditional law firm overhead – because I guess private law firm book libraries were a big thing before robots.
What I hope that means is that quality legal advice becomes more affordable, more informed, for more people.
Both in person, and in text.
