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The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in dance has increased greatly – by AI and machine learning in the notation and choreography process.

The more signals that a machine learns via its neural networks, the increased ability to generate choreography and to replicate movement. When applied to the law, it reduces the time spent on general tasks, freeing up lawyers’ time to engage in revenue-generating work. This blog post will focus on the interrelation between dance, AI and the law.

Split roles

Put simply, AI is an intelligent computer system that is used in various applications to replicate human-like thinking, reasoning and decisions. A choreographer is someone who creates and plans original movements. Such movements can include contemporary, hip-hop and ballet, or any other style. Choreographers develop ways to express human responses.

Dancers can bring choreographers’ works to life to evoke universal emotions from their audiences. Both of which are controlled by law but have applicability in transforming the legal industry as we know it.

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Test to replace, replicate and redevelop

Dance can facilitate imaginative and creative responses to artificial technologies – perhaps a way of testing the effect of proposed legislation on societies. The development of laws is the same as the development of new movements – human reactions and societal impact.

AI in dance allows us to explore the responses of movement to how legislation can be applied. Dancers can be used as machine subjects of wearable technologies to obtain collective intelligence for harnessing complex social problems.

AI narratives between society, science, and the law indicate the challenges it poses for us and the opportunities that are yet to come. The body acts as a structure and aesthetic mindset that can be replicated using machine learning. Wayne McGregor’s collaboration with the Google Arts and Culture Lab and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s LuminAI project focuses on the way the body behaves to predict movement.

The ethical issue is how to control the replication of dance by AI. Whether in dance or law, machines can learn only what they are taught to do and without human expertise, robots and machines are unlikely to understand the need for change and development.

Without data, legal structures, dancers and choreographers could act as barriers when adopting neural networks, reinforcing the human’s role in creation rather than enforcing – in law, it can be proposed that it is clear the lawyers’ role will be focused on the creation of laws, contracts and solutions, to name a few, rather than ensuring that the laws are enforced as this role is learnt by a machine.

Despite this, human skills will remain in demand as clients crave client contact in the same way that an audience wants a human dancer.

Programmed for progression

Although it’s far too early to predict the impact that AI will have in fields such as dance and law, we can predict how AI can help to negate the copyright act and litigious areas of law. For example, if a choreographer is accused of copying another choreographers’ dance, AI can help to detect the similarities and differences between the choreographies by carefully analysing movements. Together with smart contracts, it can streamline data and activate the conditions of a contract when breached, without the need for human intervention once programmed.

Memorisation is one thing that law, technology and dance have in. If you can suggest a movement, you can suggest changes to technology that can adapt to the law. It’s only a matter of time before the software becomes learned enough to choreograph and perform live choreographies, which could potentially lose dancers and choreographers in certain dances as we see a shift to technology-based productions.

Nevertheless, the accessibility and experimentation of dance prevail, and disruptive technologies can be used to enhance a dancer’s ability to learn movement through playback repetition of movement.

For law, a simple task can be learnt by a machine to enable the completion of the same task, time and time again. Yet, it’s very simplistic to say that previous decisions and legislations could be entered as data to impact how a decision is made.

Why should I care?

AI can be exploited to create dance, demonstrating the merits of developing and improving the legal practice through technology. Through dance, both AI and law can learn to predict. Similarly, to choreographers and dancers, lawyers are just as concerned as to the role AI will play in taking over the role of their profession. As clients are seeking a full service, having an understanding of the practical effects of technology and its application in various fields is a must.

As the law shifts to a technological medium, the future must also, inevitably, require a creative mind to adapt to and develop modern-day technology – all while, of course, attempting to stay ahead of the game and setting appropriate controls.