An Interview with Assoc. Prof. Dr. Murat Volkan Dülger on Artificial Intelligence and Law

2019Murat Volkan DülgerPresentation / talk

Abstract

This work was written in Turkish. The summary on this page is a translation; the citation gives the original title in parentheses.

When and how did your interest in technology and artificial intelligence (AI) begin? In childhood. My dream was always to be an astronaut. In the course of life, that wish took me from military high school all the way to the faculty of law. But my curiosity about space, space travel, cosmology, theoretical physics and technology was always there. I have always fed and developed that curiosity by reading constantly in these fields. For the more you read, the more it is the question marks in your mind that keep growing, not the answers. Even as a very small child I was someone who asked questions; my father always said that I asked a great many. I still do. I am a person who questions everything and tries to find the underlying facts and relationships. My interest in AI is a result of all this.

If you are interested in these fields and work in them, the process in any case brings AI before you one day, in one way or another. But I can say that I began to read and write on this subject in earnest when I chose it as the topic of my professorship presentation thesis, a tradition that still continues. AI affects people working in every profession. Hans Moravec compares this to an area slowly being submerged and says that, as the water level rises, those standing on the higher ground will be affected as well. In your view, which aspects of the lawyer’s profession will be affected first? They already have been. Legal publishing has turned into something entirely different. AI algorithms are now used to search for precedent decisions, legislation or publications.