Originally from Reflections on International Arbitration - Essays in Honour of Professor George Bermann

Preview Page

INTRODUCTION

The Financial Times, a leading worldwide newspaper, recently published a full-page advertisement, in oversized orange letters against a dark background: “Is Artificial Intelligence the New Pandemic? Track the digital workplace evolution with the FT. Read more at ft.com/newagenda.”  A sign of our times, and in particular a paradigm shift in business patterns? As a professor in Paris teaching international business law students the interplay between AI technology and the law (my course is entitled “Multidisciplinary Approach to a law of Artificial Intelligence”), I am attentive to the disruptive effects that the tools of Artificial Intelligence are beginning to have on business. Some observers refer to a “Fourth Industrial Revolution”.  For many, AI is a “black box”. In 2021, for business, AI can be described as an algorithm (that is to say binary codes instructions, perhaps including millions of lines of code) which processes, via considerable computing power, structured data or unstructured data (“Big Data”), in order to produce a result, or a solution. This method of doing business is rapidly becoming a business model. In the jargon of business, there are frequent references to “AI Companies”, to “Digital Native” Companies.  Today, data, and in particular Big Data, is the key.

As a litigation practitioner in an international law firm operating on a worldwide scale, it is important to me to be attentive to shifts in the way that business is conducted, really conducted in practice.