Information, Medium & Society: Twenty-second International Conference on Publishing Studies

Abstract

Generative AI brings new observations that are essential to new ways of knowing, new ways of finding the law. This paper concludes that among the changes wrought by generative AI, society and the legal community will shift their cognitive authority—the resources and techné that are trustworthy for determining what the law is. Movement in cognitive authority impacts the stability of law, which requires a certain permanence of content in the techné – medium or method – in which law is recorded and found. Permanence is an issue for generative AI. Furthermore, problems such as hallucination should give the legal community pause in accepting generative AI as authoritative. Nonetheless, the power of generative AI and for psychological reasons, generative AI will undoubtedly make its way into the legal community’s cognitive authority—hence, the shift. Hopefully, other research techné, including traditional print, will be utilized to check unbridled faith in generative AI platforms.