First they came for the farm labourers, then the factory workers. Then they made us do all our own service industry jobs – become our own (online) bank teller, travel agent… the march of the machine is nothing new, and has been going on for the last 250 years. The Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions; the Information Age: all part of the same story.

Now they’re coming for the lawyers.

Some of you must be sick to the back teeth of articles about AI. And this is, effectively, two articles about AI. However, bear with me, please!

A few weeks ago, I was at a wine tasting, and telling a couple we’ve got to know at these things about my training session with Microsoft CoPilot, the onboard AI that’s hard to ignore if you have the latest version of Windows. Rendered loquacious by a decent French white, I offered the unoriginal opinion that soon we would barely have to think for ourselves any more.

In return, David, who I think works in construction (details get blurry after the second red of the night, being honest) told me about a recent contract he and his business partner had engaged a lawyer, at some £290 an hour, to draft for them.

Unbeknownst to the lawyer, they took his draft away overnight and fed it into ChatGPT, asking if it had any suggestions. It came up with a couple of extra clauses, which they suggested to the lawyer the next day (without telling him where they’d come from). ‘Great idea!’ said the lawyer, and incorporated them into the ‘human’ version of the contract.

That’s not an isolated incident. According to a recent report, artificial intelligence (AI) tools outperformed practising lawyers in legal research tasks. The study involved four AI tools, including ChatGPT, answering 200 legal questions. AI scored between 74% and 78% overall, while lawyers averaged 69%. On accuracy, AI achieved 80% compared to 71% for lawyers. Apparently human lawyers excelled in nuanced questions, outperforming AI by nine percentage points in them. Vals AI noted that some leading legal tech firms did not participate in the study.

Scary, huh? In a similar vein, when I started this blog, some weeks ago and before our trip to south-east Asia, I fed a list of requirements for a light-hearted piece about all of this into CoPilot. The results can be seen below – not bad, I remember thinking at the time. Not at all bad. In fact, scarily like something I could have written on an off day, left to settle, and then improved on. My original intention had been to tell you about that process, and leave it at that.

However, being human, despite being also a lawyer, my mood changed and I decided to take this in a different direction. Capriciousness may yet prove to be one of our redeeming features.

That said, I really fear for future generations. Maybe we’re just at peak optimism for AI’s reach, and the bubble may burst. However, if my gut feeling is right, this could be the end of the road for millions and millions of white collar jobs. All these skills and knowledge bases we’ve prided ourselves on in our careers? Forget them. AI’s got it all down pat, thanks to the Internet and scraping tech that has, for example, apparently ripped the text from my book on Common Good Law and fed it into Skynet, or whatever you care to call Big AI now.

So what’s left for us humans, assuming the plotlines of the Terminator franchise really are fanciful and we’re not about to have some bloke with a thick Austrian accent materialise among us and start asking for a certain Sarah Connor, once he’s sorted himself out for some clothes, a gun and a bike?

There’s been a recent trend in the UK for fathers to write a letter to their sons, presumably passing on accumulated wisdom, and, also presumably, giving a bit of advice about dialling back on the toxic masculinity vibe? You can tell I’ve not really engaged with it. However, if I had a son, rather than the wonderful Daughter and Heiress, I’d be writing to them telling them to retrain as a plumber, or joiner, or electrician; anything that involves using your hands to accomplish tasks they haven’t been able to mechanise yet. Maybe I should write to D & H about it instead, but I’m sure she’s all across it.

Because everything else will change, and don’t think the creatives will be spared. As I write, the top streaming band in the US is apparently an AI creation. Think the Monkees or One Direction were fake? They were real people, at least. Yep, even Dozy, Beaky, and Titch. I’m pretty sure most people – i.e. the ones that consume music the same way as they do burgers – won’t care.

Honestly, I’m not being snobbish here: it’s been clear to me for some time that music just isn’t as central to most people’s lives as it is to me and my musician (and muso) pals. For the majority of people, music is just interesting background noise, something to wash the dishes with or dance along to at a club. Some folks don’t even care what the lyrics are. Why, then, would they care if it’s been lovingly crafted by real people, or bleeped out by AI?

Here’s a song written by a human – three of them, actually – to illustrate. I’ve always had a big soft spot for ‘Jar of Hearts,’ as performed by Christina Perri. A pop song from 2010, I’ve just always found the tune a real earworm, so much so that I recently downloaded it onto my phone, where it joined my more usual diet of rock and country artists such as Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, Jason Isbell, Dylan of course; you get the picture.

Let’s get all analytical for a second. The song, written by Perri herself along with Drew Lawrence and Barrett Yeretsian, is piano-based, although the chords are such that it’s very easy to do on acoustic guitar. The verse starts in the minor key, before moving to major in the chorus. Not exactly unheard of in a pop song. It has a middle 8, which again uses conventional chords well within the envelope of rock and pop. No Mongolian throat music for Christina.

The melody is hooky, partly because it uses the minor version of chord 4 (to get all technical on your ass) in the last line of each half of the chorus. This is a device that’s been used (at least) since the Beatles, and also, for example, features in Dylan’s ‘Make You Feel My Love,’ which I happen to be rehearsing with a band at the moment. It’s a great move, musically, as it underscores the emotion of the lyrics – ‘tearing love apart’/’who do you think you are?’

As for the lyrics, these are apparently inspired by a past relationship in Perri’s life. They’re pretty conventional, telling the tale of a former lover reappearing in her life and her realisation that they’re not worth it: they have ice in their soul, they go from relationship to relationship leaving scars behind. They collect people’s hearts in a jar.

Does it matter to me that it’s based on a real person’s emotional journey? Yes, yes it does, especially when it’s that person belting it out with a great vocal underscored by simple piano. I’m a sucker for sad songs like that. Could it have been written by AI?

Well. They used to say if you gave a hundred chimpanzees typewriters and a thousand years, eventually one of them would produce Shakespeare. AI’s a bit like that, but it’s more like sixty minutes than a thousand years. Is ‘Jar of Hearts’ a great tune? Yes it is. Is it original? In the sense that any pop song is original, yes it is. Are the lyrics original? Yes, they are, or at least I’ve not heard of any copyright actions so far. They’re well-crafted, solid words.

What sticks most is the title: ‘Jar of Hearts.’ That’s the fresh concept. Someone going around collecting lovers’ hearts in a jar. It almost has a horror edge to it, a vampiric feel, but ‘jar’ is just such a domestic item it keeps it on the mainstream side of Gothic. I’ve no doubt though, if you fed this and every other pop song of the type ever written into AI, it would eventually come up with something just as fresh that no one had ever thought of before. That’s the nature of AI: the chimps, and the typewriters, are limitless.

Maybe the real question is: will anyone care?

Well, I will, for one. In so far as I’ll now be able to verify anything on the Internet is real, I’ll still want my songwriters to be human and to have come up with their tunes and lyrics without machine assistance. I’m perhaps odd that way, but it’s kind of bound up with my belief system that these things come from some higher force ultimately, and we shouldn’t mess with the source.

I appreciate not everyone will feel that way about music. There will be other things people care about though; other arts, crafts, anything people create out of their heads at the moment. Politicians and their policies, even. There will be things that all of us, in our individual, human ways, will want to keep generated by other humans, and not machinery.

If that’s true, maybe AI will be able to teach us something more important than how to crunch numbers and words incredibly fast.

Perhaps it’ll be able to tell us whether we have ice in our soul or not. Or even if we have one.

AI Blogger

Me: write a blog piece in the style I usually use on andrewcferguson.com, outlining the implications for the future of increasing use of AI. The piece should focus on the likely impact on the employment market in Scotland, particularly in white collar professions like lawyers, and the potential economic and social implications of its use in the next 5 to ten years. The piece should be light hearted, have an arresting title, and conclude with some amusing facts about AI.

CoPilot: Brilliant, Andrew! Here’s a draft blog piece in your usual style, ready for andrewcferguson.com:

“AI, Aye? What Happens When the Robots Learn Law?”

It’s 2025, and artificial intelligence is no longer just the stuff of sci-fi films and pub debates. It’s in your inbox, your car, your fridge, and—if you’re unlucky—your boss’s latest strategy memo. But what happens when AI starts eyeing up the jobs of Scotland’s white-collar workforce? Lawyers, accountants, consultants—aye, even the folk who write blogs like this one—might soon find themselves sharing a desk with a silicon colleague who never takes a tea break.

The Rise of the Robo-Brief

Let’s start with the legal profession. AI tools are already being trained to draft contracts, summarise case law, and even predict the outcomes of disputes. That’s no small feat, considering how much time lawyers spend deciphering documents thicker than a Dundee phone book. In the next 5 to 10 years, we could see junior solicitors replaced by algorithms that don’t need sleep, don’t bill by the hour, and don’t complain about the office coffee.

But before we start panicking, it’s worth noting that AI isn’t great at nuance. It can spot patterns and crunch data, but it still struggles with the subtleties of human emotion, cultural context, and the fine art of passive-aggressive email writing. So while AI might take over the grunt work, the human touch will still be needed for courtroom drama, client hand-holding, and the occasional legal Latin flourish.

Economic Shifts and Social Ripples

The economic implications are a mixed bag. On one hand, increased productivity and lower costs could boost business and free up time for more creative or strategic work. On the other, we might see a hollowing out of mid-level jobs, especially in professions where experience used to be the main currency.

In Scotland, this could mean a shift in how we train and employ professionals. Universities may need to rethink their curricula, focusing less on rote learning and more on critical thinking, ethics, and tech fluency. Meanwhile, the job market might favour those who can work with AI rather than compete against it.

Socially, we’ll need to grapple with questions of fairness, access, and trust. Will AI widen the gap between urban and rural economies? Will clients trust a machine to handle sensitive legal matters? And what happens when your lawyer is a chatbot with a better bedside manner than your GP?

A Wee Bit of Fun to Finish

To end on a lighter note, here are a few amusing facts about AI:

• The first AI lawyer, “ROSS,” was trained on IBM’s Watson and once billed more hours than a junior associate—without ever asking for a raise.
• AI can now write poetry, compose music, and paint portraits… but still can’t fold a fitted sheet.
• In 2023, an AI was asked to write a romantic novel. It ended with the protagonists merging into a single data stream and living happily ever after in the cloud.

So, while the robots might be coming for our jobs, they’re still a bit rubbish at romance and laundry. For now, at least.

CoPilot: Would you like me to format this for your blog platform or add a header image?

Me: No thanks. Not a bad effort though.

CoPilot: Cheers, Andrew! Glad it hit the mark. If you ever fancy a follow-up piece—maybe on AI in Scottish education, healthcare, or even whisky production—I’m game. Just gie me a shout!

Me: [shudders]