Harvard Law Today: What is AI Good At?

In this issue:

Cass Sunstein ’78 on the promise and limits of a new technology.
Public banking as a tool for community development and economic justice.
Watch this year’s Ames Moot Court Competition final on YouTube.

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Artificial intelligence can be invaluable in some situations, according to Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein ’78. Just don’t ask it to predict a revolution, pick a hit song, or determine whether two people will fall in love.

Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, examines the potential and limits of AI in his new book, “Imperfect Oracle: What AI Can and Cannot Do,” published by the American Philosophical Society Press. Sunstein spoke at a book talk at Harvard Law on November 12, presenting his new work as a slice of the larger topic of AI and the law.

“Everyone in this room is biased and noisy,” he told the audience. Such biases are related to cognition rather than racism or sexism, and the “noise” comes from external factors that affect our thinking. This, he said, is the “fun” thing about AI. Its predictive powers are noise-free, and algorithms “can identify biases that people don’t even know they have.”

Yet Sunstein noted that AI’s predictive abilities are limited. If you flip a coin, for instance, the algorithm can’t predict the result any better than people could. More importantly, he argued, AI can’t foresee the effects of social interactions, which can lead to virtually any outcome.