Prof. Daniel Schwarcz Interviewed by MinnPost About AI’s Ability to Summarize and Translate Documents

Professor Daniel Schwarcz, Fredrikson & Byron Professor of Law and Distinguished University Teaching Professor, was interviewed by MinnPost about the new app CivicLoon, the creation of a Lakeville-area programmer. The app uses artificial intelligence with the aim of closing the gap between what elected representatives are doing and what their constituents can see and understand by summarizing and translating documents into plain English and translating them into more than 30 languages. Although the potential for mistakes and biases in AI models remains a cause for concern, researchers say that summarizing and translating documents is actually an area where models generally excel. Prof. Schwarcz said that while AI bias and hallucination — when the model makes up plausible but incorrect responses — are legitimate concerns in many applications, summarization is actually a relative strength of current models. He said, “There’s a lot of research that one context in which AI is pretty darn good is in summarizing text that you give it.”