I didn’t start thinking about the dangers of AI in a forensics lab. I had been using AI for various coding tasks and for helping me write better statements, and even if this article appears negative toward AI, I still use it and am genuinely impressed by how fast and capable it has become. The real wake-up call came in a Sunday School class called “Christianity and Philosophy: A Dialogue.” I was there to learn the historical context of philosophical ideas, but what I learned about the 18th-century philosopher David Hume opened my eyes to a massive digital minefield in the legal world. Here is what this article argues and it is a point that is entirely missing from the current legal debate: AI is not just a “black box” because it is complicated. It is a black box because it is a probabilistic, Humean correlation engine attempting to operate inside a deterministic, cause-and-effect legal system . Those two things are fundamentally incompatible, and Hume told us why three cen...
