Perplexed about AI? Richard Susskind wants to help
Richard Susskind wrote his first book, “The Future of Law,” in 1996. (Photo courtesy of Richard Susskind)
For nearly 30 years, Richard Susskind has written books asking lawyers to envision the future of the law and the legal profession in ways that stretch the imagination. Susskind has been one of the foremost proponents of the transformative potential of technology in legal services. Now, he's asking us to imagine larger transformation still: a world in which artificial intelligence reigns and humanity faces being sidelined.
Susskind was an early and enthusiastic booster of the development of AI, he tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles in this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast. He first became enamored of its potential as a law student in the 1980s, and he wrote his doctorate at the University of Oxford on AI and the law in 1986. But the speed and the direction of recent advances have given him pause. Will AI be a tool for humanity or its destruction?
In his new book, How to Think About AI: A Guide for the Perplexed, he hopes to help the layperson navigate the issues raised by AI and provoke a global discussion about the ethical and legal implications. Technology is too important to be left only to the technologists, he says.
While most people are able to see the promise of AI for professions other than their own, Susskind sees a phenomenon that he calls “not-us thinking,” when most people are asked whether their work could be taken over by an AI system. Lawyers should be careful not to overestimate clients’ attachment to having a human lawyer if their goal is simply to avoid legal pitfalls and if they can rely on an AI system to accomplish that.
In this episode, Susskind discusses the promise of AI for increasing access to justice and talks with Rawles, who is more of an AI skeptic, about some of the ethical decisions that will have to be made.
In This Podcast:
Richard Susskind
Richard Susskind is the president of the Society for Computers and Law, the founder of Remote Courts Worldwide and, since 1998, has been a technology adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. He was a founding member and later the 2011-2022 chair of the advisory board of the Oxford Internet Institute, where he remains as a visiting professor. He also has professorships at Gresham College in London and at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. The author of 11 books, his work has been translated into 18 languages, and he has been invited to speak in more than 60 countries. A law graduate of Glasgow University, he wrote his doctorate on artificial intelligence and the law at Oxford University in the mid-1980s. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the British Computer Society. In 2000, he was appointed as an officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. In 2023, Susskind was appointed as an honorary king’s counsel. He was promoted to commander of the Order of the British Empire in the king’s New Year Honours List 2025.
