WASHINGTON D.C.: In a year-end report published on December 31, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said artificial intelligence (AI) represents a mixed blessing for the legal field.

His 13-page report also urged “caution and humility,” as the technology can influence how judges and lawyers go about their work.

AI can facilitate access to justice for indigent litigants, revolutionize legal research, and assist courts in resolving cases more quickly and cheaply. However, it also has privacy concerns and is currently unable to replicate human discretion, he added.

“I predict that human judges will be around for a while. But with equal confidence I predict that judicial work, particularly at the trial level, will be significantly affected by AI,” Roberts wrote.

Robert’s comments on AI, the most significant in the U.S. to date, coincide with several lower courts considering the best ways to adopt the new technology, which is capable of passing the bar exam but is also prone to generating fictitious content, known as “hallucinations.”

“Any use of AI requires caution and humility,” Roberts stressed, mentioning an example of how AI hallucinations led lawyers to cite non-existent cases in court papers, which the chief justice said is “always a bad idea.”

Last month, a New Orleans federal appeals court announced what was likely the first proposed rule by any of the 13 U.S. appeals courts aimed at regulating the use of generative AI tools, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, by lawyers appearing before it.

According to the proposed rule by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, lawyers must confirm that they either did not rely on AI programs to draft briefs or that humans reviewed the accuracy of any text generated by AI in their court filings.