#64 - AI & the Future of Court Reporting: Separating Hype from Reality with Matt Moss

 Thank you for joining and for coming to this podcast episode. This was going to be a panel discussion with a few panelists that I consider to be like experts in AI that are — well, definitely more expert than I am. So I know that court reporting and AI has been a very hot topic lately, so we are going to dive right into that topic.

It's been on a lot of minds lately. Artificial intelligence, there's been fear and speculation and confusion about what AI really means for us as court reporters. Like are we being replaced? Are we behind the times? Or could AI become like one of our greatest tools? So joining me today is someone who's not only well versed in the science behind AI, but who's also passionate about helping us understand what's the hype and what's actually helpful.

So Matt Moss is here to break things down without the jargon and show us where we fit into this evolving landscape.

So yes, this episode is for anyone who's ever felt anxious about the future of our profession. Let's explore the facts, the myths, and the opportunities.

Welcome, Matt. Please introduce yourselves and tell us all about everything about you.

Well, thanks Brynn. Name is Matt Moss, and I am a freelance reporter based in the suburbs of Minneapolis now. I've been in the business a little over a decade. I am a RPR and FCRR. I do all kinds of work, lots of real time stuff. I really enjoy patent litigation and really techy stuff with weird technical details. And I've been doing a little bit of antitrust kind of things lately that have really piqued my interest. So, that's where I am professionally. I've also been the president of a couple state associations and that's been a wonderful experience getting to know, more and more people in our field and Georgia and in Colorado.

And, now I'm here in Minneapolis and just enjoying being a court reporter for a little while.

 So how did you even get into court reporting? I love asking this question to everyone... Every court reporter. It's always like an interesting story. So just tell us about that.

 Yeah, I sort of accidentally found out about it at a backyard barbecue at a friend's house. I went there. It was a Sunday morning. I remember a little hungover from going out the night before and was not expecting the lightning bolt to hit me, but it did because my buddy's house, his roommate was a IT guy for a court reporting firm.

I just mentioned being a fast typer in offhand comment, and that guy said something along the lines of, if you can type real fast, you ought to go look at being a court reporter. Those folks make really good money, and I couldn't believe it was true. And I started investigating, especially when he told me, you press multiple buttons for ladies and gentlemen of the jury are whole words. And I was like, oh, it's a different keyboard. You know, this sounds kind of interesting and, but there's no way that they do that well financially. And I looked into it and certainly did a lot better than waiting tables, which was where I was at the time. And it's really paid off for me, not just financially, but professionally and personally.

I've made a lot of great friends in this business, so I am really grateful every day that I get to wake up and go be a court reporter again.

 And which route did you take? Did you go to a brick and mortar school with the Steno machine hands-on, or did you do it online? What did you do? What school did you go to?

 Yeah, well I started at the, brick and mortar where I lived at the time I lived in Atlanta and there was one that was operating then and there and I learned Phoenix theory with the machine. I was really intrigued by the machine and that's what I wanted to do. And I got up to 140 with that theory and I got out — sort of had some opportunities to sit in with some working reporters and listening to some real live argument and recognizing how verbose attorneys can be. I realized I needed to do a lot to shorten my writing and I had been investigating Mark Kislingbury and Magnum Steno and I had already transferred to a online school at that point in time 'cause my schedule had changed up a little bit and so I made a decision to go back to square one and kind of retool my theory from the very basics. And I audited a nine month theory class. Two and a half, three years into being a court reporting student with Mark's online videos at my own pace. I would do two or 3-4 hours a day sometimes. When you know the keyboard, you can go back through theory very, very quickly.

So, that helped a lot to set a foundation to shorten my writing and make me a strong, real-time writer. I use stuff I learned in those theory classes still every day on the job. So...

 Wow. And how long did it take you to get through school? 

Man, I was super undisciplined. I'm a six year long overnight success because switching up theories sort of midstream, knocked me back a good bit and it required me to be probably more diligent than I was. It wasn't until I got three 94s in a row on the RPR-JC that Rich Germosen saw me post something about being frustrated about that online.

And he invited me to his a hundred day practice club. And, I was six years or five years into being a student before I practiced more than 10 days in a row without taking a break 'cause I was in the restaurant business and I would take whole weekends off — Thursday to Sunday and make my living then.

I would be in a situation where I'm just kind of learning all over or waking back up on Monday morning. So once I got consistent and disciplined in the work, my progress really escalated quickly.

 So, six years.

 Yeah, it took me six years, but I was also fortunate to find a way through networking and going to state association, seminars and such that I was invited to a, a, a job situation. I needed to relocate to, you know, I. The other end of the state from where I lived when I started, but I was able to kind of start in the business and begin to do, uh, the work.

And I, I, so I'd gone pro technically, um, while I was retooling my theory. And, uh, so yeah, I took, I took the long way, but it also let me really get a lot of experience along the way so that once I was on my own, I'd been. I've been through three schools, I've been through five or six different job situations, four or five living situations, and each time one of those things got in the way of becoming a court reporter I had to change something about those situations. But, you know, when I got out to take my first deposition as a certified reporter, I had been in courtrooms for years and I had been really gaining a lot of strong experience, gave me confidence to, to

Oh wow. I remember there was a guy in my school who. He came back as a guest speaker when I was in school and he was talking about how he got stuck at 180 words per minute and like he was stuck for so long that he was just like, I don't know. Somehow he ended up just going out and working without finishing, I guess in the state of New York that's allowed.

I think the, the standards are kind of like, for some reason. Lower in New York. I don't know, like they don't really ask for certifications or proof or anything. So when I graduated I was just like, they didn't ask for a resume, they didn't ask for anything like that. And it only took me actually like you just for everyone to know the, the difference of like length of time people can take to get through school.

Like Matt. Took six years because he was doing many other things. But for me, I was kind of laser focused and it took me 13 months. So like you can literally just, you know, and then also there are, there's voice reporting, which I guess takes I think six months, unless, correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard it takes six months for that.

You know, some folks who have that, you know, the ability to apply themselves kind of all day every day to it can, can hustle through the training for that. But, you know, the, the thing that really drew me to the field also was that I. And, and is relevant to our discussion today is that this idea of being a lifelong learner and having always more, uh, things to conquer and to acquire knowledge about, I, I wanted to do that anyway.

I'm somebody who's just drawn to that kind of thing as a lifestyle. So to then go to a a, an industry where I would get rewarded for that, um, that was very exciting to me. And, and it's been my experience that that's the case.

What do you mean where you would get rewarded for that? Is it, you mean like you are learning constantly learning things as you hear people talk, like experts, expert testimony and is that what you mean? Like that.

Yeah, well, you know, at the beginning it's just learning new words that lawyers use. It's learning kind of the jargon and the vocabulary of different subcultures that you work in that, you know, juvenile court has its own set of terminology and acronyms and things that fly around, and then you go into another world and, um, you know, a a a construction deposition is gonna have its own sort of things.

And so I. Kind of enjoy poking my head into different, um, subcultures and different, uh, areas that I am not in every day, and getting to learn a little bit about what it's like and what I. What terminology and vocabulary they use to describe their, their jobs and their tasks and their experiences. And, um, now I get to use that in job prep, and that's something that I think we'll get to when we talk about how we can use AI tools to, uh, become better reporters.

That's an, uh, an area that I think is ripe as a use case for us because there's so much that you can do to. Get ready for a job when you have, uh, a set of documents that you can load up and you can interrogate and ask the, the programs to output word lists or different things that might help you get ready for what you are going to go experience.

So, um, that's what I mean by being rewarded. Sorry,

go ahead.

yeah, so let's talk about that. Let's talk about the AI and your fascination with it. What drew, what drew you to AI and to learning the tools and what tools? Okay, let's start with that. Yeah, just tell us everything about that.

Well, I, you know, I lived several lives before becoming a court reporter, and, and one of those lives long ago was computer nerd, and that would would've started in the mid nineties. And so I, I. There's a alternate timeline where I am, you know, somebody who's in computer programming and, and probably working with that stuff a little bit more hands-on.

But I've always been fascinated by what can be done on a computer and, um, the different ways of tinkering with them and what can come from that. Um, I've. Not been, uh, somebody who might find it, uh, strange or intimidating. When a new piece of technology comes outta, I like to, to take a look at it and test it and play with it myself and see how it might be useful to me.

So, um, with artificial intelligence specifically, I started looking into it probably a year and a half, two years ago at a deeper level because I. You know, like you might be, I, I'm a big fan of your podcast, but I'm also just a podcast junkie generally, and I'd heard a podcast directing me to, uh, you know, become more technologically literate, just in general, as you know, a way of enhancing.

My career. And I think that general advice was that, you know, our kids are gonna come home in, uh, 10 years talking about the different, you know, the algorithms for Spotify versus Amazon. And, uh, they're gonna know the ins and outs of these things in ways that I learned, you know, long division, that that's gonna be.

The kind of topics that they're gonna be growing up in that world. And so to, to get more ready and more prepared for those kind of conversations. And 'cause I had a general interest, I started reading more deeply into the field of AI and um, kind of its history

and the approaches. sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

What, what is that podcast? What? What would you recommend for getting your tech technological like literacy up

Man there, I have a lot to, to recommend. The, the one that I think sent me down that path was, uh, armchair expert. I think they had, uh, they had some authors on that. That's, uh, are you familiar with that one?

expert? armchair expert?

Mm-hmm.

Do you, have you ever heard of that?

No, that?

sounds interesting. Armchair. Why

It's a, well, it's a real popular podcast.

It's the guy is Dak Shepherd from punk. Um, I don't know if you ever watched that back in the day on, on MTV. Uh, he also starred a whole bunch of raunchy comedies. He's kind of, I. Plays a, an everyman, goofball kind of character in, in much of his stuff. But he studied sociology in college and he is interested in a wide range of topics.

And, um, he has a, a friend that he just banters with. And because he is in movies and lives in Hollywood, he is connected to a lot of celebrities and he'll have them on and, uh, on Mondays they have celebrities, I think. And then on Thursdays they have their experts and so they had an expert. Uh, a pair of authors come on talking about the need to increase our technological competency was the kind of the core message of their book.

And so that, that sent me, uh, looking. But I, I also, you know, Ezra Klein also focused a lot on artificial intelligence starting a year or two ago. Um, and I have another number of podcasts that I can recommend for more

detailed

stuff.

Okay, we can put those in the show notes. Um, so do you, uh, why do you think it's important for court reporters to understand these things and stay up to date on technology and the advancements and innovations and ai?

Sure. Well, I think for starters. Court reporters have a, a professional obligation as the masters of all the words that are flying around. We, we have to keep up with culture and we have to be adding. Things into our dictionary that are, you know, new movies, new books that everyone's talking about because you go into jury selection and the judge might ask everybody what their Netflix show is that they're watching and um, you know, so we have kind of this professional obligation to keep up with where the cultures.

Where it's going. Uh, and to be aware of what might be spoken about in, in any given setting. And AI is definitely on the tip of a lot of folks' tongues right now. But there's an, a thing I like to do when starting out this conversation about artificial intelligence, and that is to, to try and get precise about the terminology because AI has become such a ubiquitous, uh, phrase and.

Basically marketing term that it has become obscure almost to meaninglessness in a lot of applications and, and scenarios. And in the business world, it seems like you can just slap AI on any product right now and you're gonna get a lot of buzz and maybe investment and headlines and stuff. And so, uh, happy to go deeper into

that if, if you'd like.

No, I just, well, I I think we just, everyone wants to know whether AI is coming for our jobs, whether it's coming for us, are we being replaced? Like I. I don't really worry about these things, but I hear it so much and I just wanna reassure everyone like that our jobs are not going to be, we are not gonna be replaced by ai, even though that's the first thing everyone thinks when they hear that what we, what we do, because speech recognition is getting.

Pretty good. And, and that's what people are saying and like, yes. I think it's, there are, there are apps and things that have really amazing speech, speech to text, um, recognition, but like, let's talk about that. Like why is it that we need a human court reporter? Why is that so important and irreplaceable?

Yeah, that's, I appreciate the question because I think that the fear of that comes from, at least on the outside of the business, if people are looking at what we do or have friends or family members who are beginning to train to become court reporters, they may assume that what we are doing is on the way out the door, and that that shows kind of a fundamental lack of understanding of the complexity of.

We are not just capturing the words as I like to remind attorneys and, um, and in speakers I'm listening to we're, we're also distinguishing who's talking. So we're, we're identifying speakers and capturing their words. We are often noting nonverbal action. The jury is in, the jury is out. We're doing things that help to communicate what's going on and what we're witnessing to the readers down the road, 5, 10, 20 years sometimes.

So we have a, a sacred obligation to use all of our faculties to create the record. And while voice recognition might do well. Standalone, kind of out of the box on one or two voices in a very quiet environment. You and I both know courtrooms are not always very quiet environments and the variety of speakers and speaking styles, uh, the amount of accents and the number of experts with accents complexify our, our

task.

Yeah, but, um, what if we just get like really good microphones for everyone and put it really close to their mouths? Like, what if we just up level all the technology and then we just, um, and then it's like we use the top, top level of speech to text and we train the AI to know who's speaking. We input the speakers in advance and connect it to the microphone that they're speaking in.

Um, what else, what else can we do to, um, make this work? Um, yeah, what about that?

Well, you know, there, there are entities out there who are making that pitch and, and perhaps it will work out for 'em. Um, I know that there are, because of some of the dynamics of our field, there are places that might be open to trying such a thing, but I know that when I walk into a, a, a room and a job assignment right now, people are very happy to see me, especially in some of those more technologically advanced cases where the, the jargon is so.

Specific and strange. And, um, my real time needs to pop up with the acronyms correctly for them to, uh, to create the kind of record they need to make, to take it to court. Um, I, I think, you know, there are, so back to AI as a marketing term, right? There's lots of organizations and, and people out there who are hopping on the band bandwagon and trying to, um.

You know, make it big or make a, a living by, uh, selling solutions that, uh, are gonna make a pitch similar to what you just made. But if they are claiming to be superior to what we bring to the table, that's where we have, uh, you know, plenty of qualms that we can raise. And among those is that attorneys don't.

Frequently stay locked onto their microphone. They will turn and they will talk this way and they will walk around, uh, away from a sound recording source. And, and the record that they capture can suffer from that. So that's the other thing that we bring to the table, right, is we're not just making that record and using all our senses and faculties.

We are monitoring the record we're making. So we're listening for. A term or interruptions, words that we can't hear, things that we know are gonna be garbled or they, they coughed and I missed whether the guy said he did or did not murder that person. Right. It seems like a, a case might want to have that clear on the record.

Um, but I can know that the record just got threatened by what just happened, and so I can stop in the moment. Make sure the record is clear and protected. I think that our duty to do that as court reporters, it's, it's a more important task now than it's ever been because it's what distinguishes us from somebody pushing a button and printing out

what comes out the other side.

Yeah, but also even if the attorneys have a microphone that is perfectly attached to their caller and that cannot move and it's wireless and it's like amazing, even. If it's like clear as crystal a, um, audio, there's still needs, like even if everything is perfect or close to perfect, someone still has to oversee it and someone still has to certify it.

So, and you don't want, we, people don't wanna work with robots. People don't wanna work with like machines when they're. Looking when they want a product that is well taken care of, that is overseen by a professional who can legally certify that they were there and that they witnessed what happened, and that this is a clear and accurate, a correct transcript accurately transcribed.

By someone who was present with a brain. That is like so important because I mean, I don't think legally that could be replaced by a robot. Someone has to oversee these robots, even if the robots are doing it. Like it still has to be like a human that is reading through the process and making sure that everything that is said is accurate and correct, and that nothing's taken out of context.

So like even if it does get to that point, like I feel like court reporters will never be replaceable.

I agree with you. I, I think I'm kind of destined to agree with you because of, of what we do and how much we've seen in, of this action up close. Um, I, I think I would maybe point out that if you follow this like I do and you get these news stories popping into your feed because you've clicked on a bunch of them in the past, um, that's also a form of artificial intelligence, by the way.

And so that was what I was getting at earlier when I said that

it's, it's.

those are

is a lot of things. It's not just one thing,

you know, um,

It's like, be careful what you talk about in your Facebook messaging, because I don't know what it is about the Facebook messaging, but if I message anyone anything about any specific topic, like that's all, immediately I see advertisements for exactly what I was looking for, which is actually kind of nice.

I, I, I appreciate them showing me what I'm looking for so I can actually find it.

That's their whole business model. You know, they, they exist to sell you personalized ads, so they're gonna use all the inputs that they can

It's kind of creepy, but I mean, hey, it's, it could be helpful too.

It's, it's, there's pluses and minuses to it. But, um, let's see. To go back to the, the article that I saw today when we were talking about. AI and its impact in the legal world.

What's most prominently, uh, occurring right now that the public is encountering is these articles where attorneys have cited false case law or they've had, you know, chat GPT construct portions of their arguments and generate incorrect. Citations and, um, attorneys are getting sanctioned and fined for that sort of thing.

And there's a big news item today that Anthropic, which is one of these big companies that's, uh, a big, uh, AI hyper, a big pusher of, uh, what large language models, uh, can do. They are in court themselves because they're accused of, uh, of training on, uh, copyrighted material without obtaining the permission of the owners of the copyrights.

And they filed a brief in that case where their own, they use their own product to generate some of the language in their brief. And the other side pointed out that this was. Bogus or incorrect. It was improper citations, uh, incorrect, um, naming or, uh, headlines or there was issues about it. So that's literally in the news today, and that's what the public's seeing is that the relationship between courts and the law and artificial intelligence are right now, it's being misused.

Uh, and because people are being told it can do everything wonderfully well, and it's this being sold as this. All, uh, general purpose solution product. That's where people are believing the hype and getting themselves in trouble.

Okay, so what's the difference? Okay, so in our messaging about this topic, when we were preparing for the podcast interview, I asked you, um, I asked you like what you wanted to talk about and what I should ask you, like, so that. You, I can make sure that you're talking about what you, what you are most like well versed in that you know most about.

Um, and you mentioned something about like ai, A GI and LLMs. Is that something important to bring up? Which I don't know, I don't even remember right now what.

Sure. Sure. Well, that's, I think that's the most important. Piece of this to me and, and the, the message I try to drive to court reporters. I got, I was able to give a talk on this to my old association in Colorado a couple of weeks ago, and I started out with urging people who are gonna talk about this to know and to be precise about their terms.

Because artificial intelligence, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, is not one thing. It is a large grouping of various. Techniques that are applied to research approaches to all kinds of different tasks. Um, there's AI in your spell checker, there's AI in chess, there's AI in video games. It, so when, when people are discussing AI right now and they say something like, oh, I asked ai, uh, if court reporter are gonna be replaced by.

Technology and it told me X, Y, Z. What they're doing is they're assigning, uh, the, the letters ai, the, uh, performance of chat, GPT, which is one of several large language models which come out of the field of deep learning and neural networks, which are itself a subcategory of research and development in the artificial intelligence field.

So I know that's a lot of words, a lot of mumbo jumbo, kind of to say that. Um, we don't wanna be echoing the marketing and the hype folks out there when they are saying that, uh, you need to 10 x your productivity by learning ai. Well, I think what we really need to do is we need to learn what these tools are and what they're not, um, how they could maybe help us if they can.

And, um. And perhaps know a little bit more about the people who make them and, uh, what they are working on to, uh, to be prepared when this stuff comes up in conversation on our jobs, on the record, um, and that sort of thing. So that was the precision I I was talking about with AI and large language models.

Um, the other piece of what you mentioned is a GI. I think that that's an important distinction for people to understand, especially court reporters, right? Because I mentioned earlier that we're using all of our senses to make the record. We're using our site and our hearing and our tactile. Capabilities on the machine, right?

We're using the ability to hear a sound and know that that's coming from my left. And at the left side of the room is plaintiff's counsel typically, and I'm hearing from the person who's farther left than this other person that plaintiff's counsel. So not only do I. I kind of know her voice because we've been working on this trial for a couple days, but because I can physically sense the direction of the sound, I know that that's likely that person who said that thing.

All those things are part of a human brain's capability. A GI is the pursuit of. An all purpose application that can do any and every task better than a human with a human brain. And so many people have seen the hype and the excitement around chat, GPT and large language models bursting onto the scene and associated it with this larger fantasy slash goal of a lot of folks in that business of bringing

a GI.

what is a larger language model?

Okay. Large language models are, um, the approach to, uh, using large, very, very, very big sets of data that you could download from the internet or elsewhere, and lots and lots of computing power. To feed into an algorithm and use what is called, you know, deep learning. And, um, there's different styles of, of training these models.

But, um, they, uh, they use various techniques to create something that you can ask a question and get a human seeming response. That's what Chad GPT is. It is a large language model. Google has their own large language model, Gemini there. There are several others. There's a, Twitter has one called Grok.

There's some Chinese companies that have them. And so large language models are the thing that sort of broke through the public consciousness at the end of 2022 when a certain version of chat GPT came out that had a lot more. Power and capabilities and the technology that does that wasn't very new.

What was new was the computing power and the amount of data that could be processed to spit something out that had the seeming human coherence to it. That's what a large language model or LLM is.

Mm-hmm.

I'm gonna have to review this later because I'm like, wow, okay. That, that doesn't, so, okay, let's, let's, um,

let's shift gears here because I know that, well, Mike, I, for some reason, I, I forgot to plug in my laptop and it's like low battery right now. So we have like maybe five minutes left. So in this last five minutes, I want to ask you, so

shifting away from the AI topic is.

I know, I understand that you are gonna be speaking at the NCRA convention at, um, in Minneapolis. So you're gonna be talking about your shift from court to freelancing. So does that mean that you started working in court immediately upon graduation, and then that was your experience for the first however many years, and now you're pivoting into freelance?

Well, actually I started at at a freelance firm that had contracts to cover a lot of court. So I got a nice taste of both worlds early on. I'm, in the beginning, I was only in court, I was in juvenile court for most of my. First few years and then, uh, as I grew in the profession and, and eventually got my certifications and all, I got more deposition work.

I was doing a lot of freelancing before I moved to, um, Denver to become an official. So I, in Georgia at the beginning, lots of court, lots of freelance. Then moving to Denver became an official, and I was in criminal courts only for two years or so. Um, then I married one of my coworkers and, uh, you know, she and I decided that it, it would be best for us if I would go back into the freelance world.

So I made that transition. And in between those two freelance journeys, I. In Denver did a lot of real-time work for judges every day. So I got to take this courtroom sharpened real-time skill back out into the freelance market. And so I'm a freelancer now, but I also, you know, have a deep affection for court.

I fill in, in, in federal court here in Minneapolis, and I, I, uh, when I can get into a courtroom or an arbitration, I can, I, I enjoy that stuff and I know some freelancers don't, but I do.

Okay, so, let's use this last two minutes to summarize what your, what is your speech going to be about? Because I used the podcast to practice when I was speaking at the NCRA convention, and it was really helpful. So let's, so what are the key points that, key takeaways, if you've, if you've, you know, if, even if you haven't, I guess, figured that out yet, you could just do it now.

For my talk for NCRA.

Uh.

Okay. Yeah. Um, well, I'm just gonna be, I'm co-presenting on a panel and I think we're gonna be just discussing what you wanna have in place, and so it changes based on where you live, what your requirements are. You wanna make sure you have a notary public designation, if that's what's required to authorize you to administer oaths in your state and or you know, if you need some kind of state certification that your national certifications qualify you for Getting all the administrative background stuff ready to go and getting a.

Rate sheet in place and making some contacts into the freelance business side of things before you know you're out on your last day from court. It helps for the transition. So that's sort of where my focus

will be.

So it's a panel discussion of people who are all transitioning from court to freelance.

I think it's, it's myself and one other person who's recently transitioned from court into freelance. So she's just made the transition and I did it a few years ago. So we'll have. Some different perspectives on it.

Nice. Okay, cool. Well, um, where can people find you online? Is there any, do you have any resources that people can, you can share?

Yeah, I, I mean, I'm on Facebook and, uh, uh, LinkedIn. You can just search my name, usually find me there. Um, I wrote a Tumblr blog a number of years ago that still has a whole bunch of stuff about court reporting and going through school and test anxiety and that kind of thing. So just search for stint on Tumblr and, and you'll find some fun stuff there.

But yeah, you can find me all over the place. I'm on all the

stuff, all the social.

Amazing. Thank you so much, Matt, for joining the Court Reporter podcast and I hope that everyone had, um, some realizations about AI and how it's not gonna replace us and how. Court reporting is awesome and, um, how important it is to stay updated on these topics and to learn more about the technology, which is one of my goals.

So I'm happy to have learned this from you. Um, so hopefully next time Chris can join as he was supposed to, and Tamara too. So thank you so much for joining. I'm sure we'll be seeing you again and have a great rest of your day. I'm gonna end the live stream and then we can just, um, recap some, some of the things that we just talked about.