Adopting AI (Artificial Intelligence) technologies in the court reporting industry is one of the most complex issues of our generation, despite the great promise that AI holds for CAT (computer-aided transcription) software vendors looking to create a better and faster experience for its customers and higher translation rates for the ultimate end users of a reporters’ realtime feed.
Applying AI technologies is a critical competitive advantage. Even once we have a sense of how we could serve our market with AI, adopting and scaling these technologies within our industry is a behemoth of an undertaking. The conventional wisdom – to start small – has given way to a recognition that organizations need a fundamental shift in their approach to data to do even that well. Onboarding AI is not an easy undertaking.
Especially as the pandemic has accelerated the use of remote technologies — such as Zoom who has incorporated ASR (automated speech recognition) technology into their platform for judges and attorneys to use, instead of a stenographer’s realtime streaming — the big question on everyone’s mind is whether all that onboarding eventually means that the ASR bots are going to take all our human jobs. The promising answer from most experts is that there will certainly be roles for humans even in a machine-powered future; the real question is what those jobs will be, how our court reporting industry can prepare our workforce to incorporate emerging AI technology, and how human stenographers and AI will work together.
Finally, the question at the crux of any discussion about AI and ASR is this: Are we managing the machines, or are they managing us? Leaders need to set boundaries for the bots (ASR, AI), ethical, legal, and otherwise. There are a myriad of ways that AI’s tentacles can reach dangerously beyond what we expect – so we need to learn how to keep them reined in.
We exist to facilitate the fortifying of the Stenography profession and ensure its survival for the next hundred years!
As court reporters, we've handed the relationship role with our customers, or attorneys, over to the agencies and their sales reps. This has done a lot of damage to our industry. It has taken away our ability to have those relationships, the ability to be humanized and valued. We've become a replaceable commodity.
Merely saying we are the “Gold Standard” tells them that we’re the best, but there are alternatives. Who we are though, is much, much more powerful than that! We are the Responsible Charge. “Responsible Charge” means responsibility for the direction, control, supervision, and possession of stenographic & transcription work, as the case may be, to assure that the work product has been critically examined and evaluated for compliance with appropriate professional standards by a licensee in the profession, and by sealing and signing the documents, the professional stenographer accepts responsibility for the stenographic or transcription work, respectively, represented by the documents and that applicable stenographic and professional standards have been met.
This designation exists in other professions, such as engineering, land surveying, public water works, landscape architects, land surveyors, fire preventionists, geologists, architects, and more. In the case of professional engineers, the engineering association adopted a Responsible Charge position statement that says, “A professional engineer is only considered to be in responsible charge of an engineering work if the professional engineer makes independent professional decisions regarding the engineering work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional engineer’s physical presence at the location where the engineering work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the engineering work.”
If we were to adopt a Responsible Charge position statement for our industry, we could start with a draft that looks something like this: "A professional court reporter, or stenographer, is only considered to be in responsible charge of court reporting work if the professional court reporter makes independent professional decisions regarding the court reporting work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional court reporter’s physical presence at the location where the court reporting work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the court reporting work.”
Shared purpose
The cornerstone of a strategic narrative is a shared purpose. This shared purpose is the outcome that you and your customer are working toward together. It’s more than a value proposition of what you deliver to them. Or a mission of what you do for the world. It’s the journey that you are on with them. By having a shared purpose, the relationship shifts from consumer to co-creator.
In court reporting, our mission is “to bring justice to every litigant in the U.S.” That purpose is shared by all involved in the litigation process – judges, attorneys, everyone. Who we are is the Responsible Charge. How we do that is by Protecting the Record.
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