Using Generative AI for Life and Work

Illinois Paralegal Association

Generative AI is already boosting productivity for millions of people, and it will have major impacts – for better or worse – in business, education, law, medicine, and the creative arts. Unlike older AI applications that only analyze and manipulate existing data, Generative AI chatbots can create new text, video, and audio based on your inputs (prompts) while drawing on their knowledge of enormous text databases called Large Language Models. Gen AI tools can easily and efficiently handle administrative tasks like proof-reading, summarizing, and writing. They can also suggest how to rewrite a difficult e-mail to strike the right tone, brainstorm ideas for how to solve a logistical problem, or suggest names for a new product. But for users unaware of their limitations and how they work, Generative AI tools pose major personal, professional, and legal risks. The most serious issues include hallucinations (answers that are incorrect or completely made-up), societal biases that skew results, risks to intellectual property, and loss of personal privacy. Despite these grave concerns, Gen AI tools and AI-generated information are quickly becoming pervasive, so understanding their risks and their potential is an essential skill for successful employees.

This session explains how Generative AI works, why it’s different from older types of AI, what it can do for you, and risks to bear in mind when using it. We will focus on Gen AI chatbots that produce text after being trained on Large Language Models. These tools – including ChatGPT from OpenAI, Gemini from Google, and Claude from Anthropic – are readily available in both free and paid versions.

• Non-substantive CLE hours: 1.5