At the first day of the American Immigration Lawyers Association conference today, I was encouraged to hear a fair amount of discussion of AI:

• A panel on tech and ethics raised important points about doing an annual tech audit, having a firm-wide AI and tech policy, focusing on using tech to make the client’s experience better, and anticipating how AI may affect clients’ rights in the future (for example, will AI be able to identify unlabeled photos of people online through facial recognition?).

• Another panel of AI experts demonstrated how to prompt AI to give you better results and how you might use it in your work. (One idea that made sense for the law clinic setting was to have the AI play the “role” of the prosecutor as you prepare for court, cross examining your client and making objections on direct.)

• A panel of business immigration lawyers who represent universities in hiring foreign faculty and staff noted the dramatic increase in approvals in AI and other STEM fields, including National Interest Waivers but also O-1A and H-1B.

For the most part, however, the conversations were about how AI is affecting practice today. No panels appear to be reflecting seriously on how AI will disrupt — perhaps obliterate — the practice of law as we know it. One panelist took the position that AI will simply replace mundane tasks and create more demand for lawyers, analogizing to the way that ATM machines led to more jobs for bank clerks because it made it cheaper to open a bank branch.

Most AI experts think the effects will be much more pervasive, at a minimum transforming what people seek when they hire a lawyer. The immigration bar, struggling (as it must) to catch up with the technology of today, may find itself unprepared for the technology of tomorrow.