Template:M intro technology Better call ChatGPT: Difference between revisions
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====The oblique purposes of formal contracts==== | ====The oblique purposes of formal contracts==== | ||
{{Drop|T|here is one}} peculiarity that a literal approach to contract review cannot address, but we should mention: sometimes a contract’s true significance runs tangentially to its content. The forensic detail is not always the point.<ref>This is, broadly, true of all contracts, from execution until formal enforcement — and the overwhelming majority of contracts are never formally enforced.</ref> | |||
Sometimes the ''act'' of finely thrashing the details out ''actively frustrates'' the real [[purpose]] of the contract, which is to fulfil a ''social'' function. As a commitment signal or competence signal. | |||
A basic example: {{plainlink|https://www.handbook.fca.org.uk/handbook/COBS/8A/1.html|European financial services regulations}} require institutions to have written contracts with all customers, as a regulatory end in itself. The rules are less prescriptive about what the contracts should ''say''. | |||
A | A firm must, therefore, have a written contract to do business. To meet that end, ''any'' delay in finalising that contract, in the name of “getting it right”, ought to be a source of regret. (You might be surprised how often firms are obliged to negotiate their [[terms of business]], in that it is not “never”.) | ||
In | In sorts of contract act as a sort of mating ritual: a performative ululation of customary cultural verities signalling that yes, we care about the same things you do, are of the right stuff, the same mind and our “ad idems” are capable of consensus. Again, it matters less what the contract says than that it is ''there''. | ||
If it is that — most [[NDA]]s are that — then descending into | If it is that — most [[NDA]]s are that — then descending into an LLM-level of subterranean pedantry and exactitude, in the service of “picking up things that even a gun [[paralegal]] might not”, is a rum plan. The point is to carry out the ritual, afford it the minimum required pleasantries, but not to ''labour'' them. | ||
====Volume contracts==== | |||
{{drop|T|hose exceptions aside}}, where high-volume, low-risk legal processes do not function as courting rituals, the name of the game is not ''perfect'' negotiation, but ''no'' negotiation. | |||
''Negotiation is the problem''. | |||
If you find customers regularly negotiate your [[terms of business]], or you get regular snarl-ups on procurement ''you have bad forms''. | |||
''Fix'' them. | |||
This might mean persuading legal to come to Jesus on the width of its idealised liability exclusion, or it just rewriting the form in a nicer font and plainer language — but either way, the answer is not to leave the problem where it is and ''mechanise it''. | |||
LLMs as finite. They necessarily mimic what has gone before. While yes alpha go might engineer a novel strategy in a zero sum game, it is not so easy on in the non linear infinitude of life. An LLM that purports to improve on its training material will be distrusted it doesn’t understand, so what good had it got of reimagining? | Doing that will leave you two enduring problems: first, your portfolio of standard contracts ''will not be standard''; secondly, your bad form is now beset with administrative machinery it will be hard, later, to take away. By appointing unskilled technocrats to manage a broken process — and, likely, ''other'' unskilled technocrats to oversee and monitor them — you have institutionalised a bad process. | ||
John Gall’s [[Systemantics]] captures this well. [[The temporary tends to become permanent|Temporary fixes have a habit of becoming permanent]]. Bureaucrats are butterfly collectors: they do not give up their responsibilities without a fight. Their managers rarely have the stomach for one: ''it does a job: leave it be''. | |||
Before long, this process will have itself sedimented into the administrative sludge that weighs your organisation down. Other processes will depend on it. Surgical removal will be ''hard''. | |||
====Toyota production system: | |||
[[Large language model|LLM]]s can’t function by themselves (yet: we are not quite at the point of Skynet, however much techno-utopians might hanker for it). They imply not saved legal cost, but “waste” transferred: it will be diffused among software-as-a-service providers, the firm’s procurement complex, internal audit, operations and, yes, legal who will still have to handle exceptions, manage and troubleshoot the system, vouch for it, periodically certify its legal adequacy and present it to the opco | |||
LLMs as finite. They necessarily mimic what has gone before. While yes alpha go might engineer a novel strategy in a zero-sum game, it is not so easy on in the non-linear infinitude of life. An LLM that purports to improve on its training material will be distrusted it doesn’t understand, so what good had it got of reimagining? | |||
The perfect LLM serves up an archetypal sample of what you already have. | The perfect LLM serves up an archetypal sample of what you already have. | ||
<references /> | <references /> |