In an experiment with 133 patent attorneys, an SI assistant improved junior attorneys' work, but without it their evaluation skill did not grow; seniors kept the gain
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
An SI assistant immediately lifts the quality of newcomers' work, but experience without it does not grow for everyone — the effect depends on baseline training.
NBER working paper w35720 (David Autor and co-authors; issued September 2026, revised in October): a three-month randomised experiment at 11 US law firms. Two thirds of participants received Google Labs' not-yet-released SI assistant InFlow; independent attorneys scored the work blind. With SI, quality was higher at both 10 and 90 days, especially for junior attorneys. In a task without SI, seniors kept their advantage (0.45 SD), while juniors showed no average gain: fewer middling scores, but more poor ones and more good ones. The authors: foundational expertise is a prerequisite for durable skill. According to The Decoder, the study was funded by Google.
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