Arguments with Algorithms

A lawyer's bumbling attempts at understanding AI

If you've been waiting for a lawyer to publicly embarrass themselves while trying to understand AI, your patience is about to be rewarded.

This is not a newsletter written by someone who understands machine learning from the ground up. This is a newsletter written by someone who's learning it in real time, making mistakes, and documenting the journey.

Who I am and why I’m doing this (to myself):

I've been practicing law for 12 years in India and in Silicon Valley. I know how to spot a weak argument, how to negotiate and get a deal done, how to find the holes in someone's logic, and how to present evidence in a way that actually persuades people. I can read a contract and tell you where you're going to get screwed. I describe my job to business partners as being ‘the person who keeps them out of orange jumpsuits’.

What I don't know is Python. Or statistics. Or what a transformer model actually transforms.

But I’m super stoked by the freight train called AI that has come for me, the legal profession, our society and our world.

I'll be publishing weekly dispatches from my attempt to understand AI through the lens of someone who thinks about product development, risk management and turning cool technology into things that won't get anyone sued. You'll also get to watch me:

• Stumble through coding with AI tools (spoiler: the AI is often more patient than I am)

• React to new AI laws and regulations as they emerge (with the healthy skepticism of someone who's seen how legislation actually gets made)

• Comment on AI developments in the news (separating the hype from the reality)

• Share my thoughts on what AI means for society and what it means to be human in an age of artificial intelligence.

The honest truth:

I'm probably going to get things wrong. I'm definitely going to ask dumb questions. But I'm also going to bring a professional skeptic's eye to claims about what AI can and can't do—along with the hard-won experience of someone who's spent years figuring out how to make innovative technology actually work in the real world.

If you're also trying to figure out what this technology actually means for your work, your industry, or just your daily life, maybe we can stumble through it together.

Free vs. paid:

Most content will be free as I build this community of fellow confused professionals. Paid subscribers will get deeper legal analysis on AI developments, early access to posts, and my notes from the online courses I'm taking to try to understand this stuff.

Let's figure this out together:

I'd love to hear what brought you here. Are you also trying to understand AI from the outside? Are you in tech trying to understand how lawyers think? Do you have questions I should be asking?

Hit reply and let me know. I read every response (and I desperately need the help).

Thanks for joining me in this experiment.

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Next week: My attempts to use AI to create a matchmaking app.