The Ominous Approach of Autonomous Agents, Plus: Richie Furay — Live From the Playroom | Rebroadcast

Find us online at redcavelegal.com. Now, before we get to our interview today with, pausing for dramatic effect, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Richie Furay, let's talk about the ominous approach of autonomous agents.

[sighs] Let's do it.

We're talking about AI again.

Just so much stuff happening in this space.

And I'll tell you, I just did a presentation for a bar association with my friend Nikki Black, the Rhode Island State Bar, and probably had, like, a thousand people.

And, uh, let me say, there were many strong opinions on the subject.

[chuckles] So I'm gonna keep following where the interest lies because there's been an update of sorts in the AI legal tech world that I want to tell you about.

So as it stands right now, in doing a bunch of presentations on AI and talking with attorneys about it on a regular basis, it seems like most, especially sole and small firm attorneys, aren't using AI at all.

They're just talking about it.

Or if they're using AI applications, it's the generative AI.

So you know, that's where you ask the question, and it gives you the answer, right? So things like ChatGPT from OpenAI, Google's Gemini, Microsoft's Copilot, even Twitter or X has their own AI called Grok, which, man, Elon Musk can come up with, like, really terrible brand names.

It's like a special skill set.

But don't also sleep on Claude 3 by Anthropic, which actually a lot of the lawyers that I talk to who are deep into the AI stuff, they like it better than any of those other tools.

But this is kind of the standard submit a prompt, ask a question, request an output, you get text, audio, video.

Even my mom knows about this.

We're not treading any new ground.

If you haven't used these yet with, like, non-confidential data in your law firm just to test them out, just do it.

It's long past time.

Now, what's next, you may be asking yourself.

What comes after generative AI? I think the answer to the question is autonomous agents.

So what are those? With generative AI tools, as I mentioned, you're creating a prompt, so you're asking the AI to do something for you, and then you iterate with the AI.

You re-prompt it.

You ask it to tweak the results.

You're kind of deeply invested and involved in that process, and for that conversation to keep going, for things to continue to be done, you have to drive that process.

But let me ask you, what if you could remove yourself from that process? Well, that's where autonomous agents come in.