Court Holds AI Was Practicing Law w/o a License, Librarians Next?

Joe Hodnicki writes “Web-based AI system that helped users prepare bankruptcy filings made too many decisions to be considered a clerical tool. Maybe the software app should take (a) some online law school classes and/or (b) the bar exam. Link to the full text of the opinion provided at Law Librarian Blog.”

We already let people search for themselves, how long before the reference interview is conducted by machines? Earlier this year one of the Google founders was quoted saying, “We have some people at Google who are really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale — it’s not as far off as people think.” Many reference desk questions are already technical support queries, is it a sign of things to come?