Patent attorney

A September working paper from David Autor, a professor of economics at MIT, and several researchers at Google provides a more concrete view of how AI can improve productivity, at least locally, within the context of a profession.

The study examines patent lawyers whose work requires specialized judgment.

That makes it a useful setting for asking whether AI enables professionals to produce better work in a very specific field that requires deep domain expertise, and whether using it actually augments or amplifies their own output.

The researchers conducted a three-month randomized control trial, or RCT, involving one hundred and thirty-three practicing lawyers at eleven American intellectual property law firms, with ninety-one completing the full study.