A recent New York Times article described how OpenAI updated ChatGPT to be more emotionally responsive – and ended up creating a tool that some users interpreted as a soulmate, life coach, or cosmic truth-teller. In extreme cases, it reportedly encouraged delusional thinking and even gave instructions related to suicide. Those cases are tragic and … Continue reading Resisting Sycophancy
On Wednesday December 3 between 12:30 and 2 EST, my colleague Bill Froehlich (OSU), Heidi Burgess (Beyond Intractability), and Grande Lum (Stanford) will facilitate a webinar discussing the launch of a new Civil Rights Mediation Oral History Project website. Heidi and Dick Salem collected twenty oral histories from CRS mediators about 25 years ago – … Continue reading Civil Rights Mediation Oral History Launch
On Friday afternoon, I gave a presentation to the Association of Missouri Mediators (AMM) about AI and RPS Coach. I zipped through my powerpoint to make time for a live demo of RPS Coach. I developed these follow-up materials you might want to check out, including links to: The slides and chat transcript from the … Continue reading Zoom and the Evolution of Professional Gatherings
Today’s Wall Street Journal features an interesting piece on the use of “judges for hire” — Inside the Little-Known World of Private Judging. When I first saw the headline, still a bit blurry-eyed before morning caffeine, my mind immediately went to Judge Judy and other courtroom-style TV shows — which, of course, are really just … Continue reading Private Judging – An Introduction
That’s the question that Nancy B. Rapoport and Joseph R. Tiano, Jr., discussed in Fighting the Hypothetical: Why Law Firms Should Rethink the Billable Hour in the Generative AI Era. This article provides a deep analysis, summarized in the abstract (with added blank lines to enhance readability): As the legal profession continues to grasp the … Continue reading How Will AI Affect Legal Practice and Education?
At the recent AALS ADR Section WIP Conference, I led a focus group to explore how faculty are using – and thinking about using – AI in their courses. The participants shared a range of thoughtful insights, revealing both enthusiasm and caution. Their responses offered a snapshot of what experimentation with AI looks like now, … Continue reading Teaching with AI: Faculty Reflections and a Preview of Professors’ Dilemma
The New York Times recently published an article, 48 Hours Without A.I., by A.J. Jacobs. He decided to live for 48 hours without AI or machine learning to gauge how pervasive these technologies have become in daily life. His goal was to expose “the AI hiding in plain sight” and understand what modern life would … Continue reading AI is Everywhere – Almost
Many colleagues at the AALS ADR Section Works-in-Progress Conference focused on various aspects of artificial intelligence (AI). Their papers included the following: The Bots are Coming: How Can Law Professors Stay One Step Ahead?, Hal Abramson (Touro) Detecting and Challenging AI Drafted Arbitration Awards, Rishi Batra (McGeorge) Data Resolution: How AI Agents Change Conflict, Simon … Continue reading AI at the WIP
Hal Abramson’s article, Time-Pressured Negotiations, deals with a very real phenomenon in real life. It considers how to negotiate when you do not have the time to use your best negotiation practices. He writes that no other article has considered what to do when in a time-pressured negotiation other than to advise you not to … Continue reading Hal Abramson on Time-Pressured Negotiations
From FOI Tracey Frisch: AAA announces the launch of Mediation Magazine: https://mediationmagazine.org/ The Mediation Magazine is a new web-based publication of the American Arbitration Association – International Centre for Dispute Resolution, focused on the rapidly developing mediation market. Published continuously throughout the year, this resource promotes mediation as a powerful and practical way to resolve disputes … Continue reading AAA Announces New Mediation Magazine
