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Welcome to this week's edition of The Legal Wire!

China is betting big that AI can add ¥11 trillion ($1.6T) to GDP by 2035 linking 10 provinces into a national computing grid that already hosts 100 models and channels workloads to underused resources. It’s an industrial policy flex designed to outbuild export controls and ride the momentum of homegrown champions like DeepSeek.

Back in the West, the debate is less about scale and more about direction. Colorado lawmakers just stripped out an AI liability shield after public blowback, though critics warn the revised bill still weakens last year’s disclosure rules by only notifying users when they directly interact with AI (not when it’s judging a loan). And Microsoft’s Mustafa Suleyman says studying “AI consciousness” is premature, a view that is at odds with rivals exploring AI welfare, signaling that even the experts can’t agree on which risks deserve oxygen now.

Then comes the gut check: an MIT NANDA study finds 95% of generative AI pilots stall. The wins come from focused use cases, bought (not built) tools in regulated sectors, and unsexy back-office automation, while most budgets chase sales and marketing. In other words: precision beats hype.

Spotlight this week: Poppy Legal, a platform purpose-built for in-house teams to tame outside counsel spend with clean data, granular controls, and AI-driven insight, turning the billable hour from a cost center into an information asset.

This week’s Highlights:

• Industry News and Updates

• Poppy Legal: Smarter Legal Spend, Made Simple

• AI Regulation Updates

• AI Tools to Supercharge your producivity

• Legal prompt of the week

• Latest AI Incidents & Legal Tech Map

➡️ China bets on AI to pump trillions into economy | China is expanding its national computing network to make AI a key growth driver, with projections it could add over 11 trillion yuan ($1.6 trillion) to GDP by 2035. Ten provinces have joined a unified platform linking demand with underused resources, already hosting 100 AI models. The move comes as Beijing boosts chip and data center investment while facing tighter U.S. export controls, even as homegrown models like DeepSeek challenge Western rivals.
^{Aug 25, 2025, Source: SCMP}

➡️ Colorado Lawmakers Drop AI Liability Shield After Criticism | Colorado lawmakers quickly amended a bill after backlash over a provision that could have blocked lawsuits against AI firms. While the liability shield was removed, critics say the bill still weakens last year’s AI disclosure rules by only requiring notice when consumers directly interact with AI, not when it’s used behind the scenes in decisions like loan approvals.
^{Aug 21, 2025, Source: The Lever}

➡️ Microsoft’s AI Chief Warns Against Studying ‘AI Consciousness’ | Microsoft’s Mustafa Suleyman warned against researching AI consciousness, calling it premature and risky. His stance clashes with rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI, which are exploring “AI welfare” as chatbots grow more human-like.
^{Aug 21, 2025, Source: TechCrunch}

➡️ MIT: 95% of Generative AI Pilots Are Failing | A new MIT NANDA report finds that only 5% of generative AI pilots at companies deliver rapid revenue growth, while 95% stall with little measurable impact. The study based on interviews, surveys, and analysis of 300 deployments shows startups succeed by targeting specific pain points, but large firms often fail due to poor integration and reliance on in-house builds. Purchased AI tools succeed twice as often as internal projects, especially in regulated sectors. The report also notes most budgets go to sales and marketing, though the highest ROI comes from back-office automation.
^{Aug 19, 2025, Source: Project NANDA}

Legal Technology

Poppy Legal: Smarter Legal Spend, Made Simple

If there’s one topic that unites in-house teams of every size, it’s legal spend. Tracking it, understanding it, and managing it: none of it is simple. For legal departments working under increasing budget pressure and growing expectations from the business, the billable hour is no longer just a costs concern, its now also a data concern.

This pain point is exactly where Poppy Legal is carving out its niche as a legal tech platform focused exclusively on helping teams manage outside counsel spend with clarity, control, and AI-powered insight.

This week, The Legal Wire takes a closer look at Poppy Legal, a platform designed to do exactly what its founders once wished existed.

Click here to continue reading the full interview

The AI Regulation Tracker offers a clickable global map that gives you instant snapshots of how each country is handling AI laws, along with the most recent policy developments.

The most recent developments from the past week:

📋 22 August 2025 | The No Advanced Chips for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Act introduced: House of Representatives member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL-8) has introduced The No Advanced Chips for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Act to the House of Representatives. The Act prohibits exports of advanced AI semiconductors to China unless both the US Department of Commerce and the United States Congress approve. It also provides that semiconductors are covered if they exceed thresholds for processing power, dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) bandwidth, or interconnect capacity. The Act requires the Secretary of Commerce to conduct an interagency review with the Secretary of Defence, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of State, and the Director of National Intelligence. The Act requires assessment of risks to US national security, technological leadership, military applications, human rights, and economic impacts following the enactment of a joint resolution by Congress approving each export. The Act provides exemptions for humanitarian purposes, US diplomatic operations, and chip repairs.

📋 20 August 2025 | Australian Treasurer commits to fresh AI review, stalling law push: It is reported that at the Economic Reform Roundtable, Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers has called for another examination of gaps in existing AI regulations, delaying efforts to introduce a dedicated AI law as business groups and unions remain divided on how the emerging technology should be governed.

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This prompt turns your inbox into an automated intake engine, triaging messages, diarising deadlines, drafting replies, and creating tasks, so lawyers spend minutes reviewing instead of hours sorting emails.

Instructions:
Provide samples from your legal inbox (redacted is fine) plus your practice areas and preferred task labels. Ask for an AI agent design that will:

- Classify incoming emails (court notice, client update, opposing counsel, vendor/invoice, scheduling).

- Extract entities & deadlines (parties, matter numbers, dates, docket cites) and auto-compute due dates when rules are referenced.

- Create structured tasks (owner, priority, due date, checklist) and push to your PM/calendar system.

- Draft smart reply templates (plain-language client updates, courtesy notices to OC, acknowledgment to court clerk).

- File attachments to the right matter in your DMS and link them in the task.

- Escalate exceptions (potential conflicts, privilege issues, urgent orders) to a supervising attorney.

- Maintain an audit log (source email, extracted fields, actions taken).

Deliverables requested:

- A step-by-step workflow diagram (trigger → actions → outputs)

- Integration list (email, DMS, calendar/PM, conflict database)

- Guardrails (privilege handling, PII redaction, human-in-the-loop checkpoints)

- KPIs (triage time, deadline accuracy, response latency, tasks created per day)

- A 14-day pilot plan with test cases and rollback criteria

The Responsible AI Collaborative is a not‑for‑profit organization working to present real‑world AI harms through its Artificial Intelligence Incident Database.

View the latest reported incidents below:

⚠️ 2025-06-30 | McDonald's McHire AI Recruitment Platform Reportedly Exposed Data of 64 Million Applicants via Default Login and API Vulnerability | View Incident

⚠️ 2025-07-21 | Google Gemini CLI Reportedly Deletes User Files After Misinterpreting Command Sequence | View Incident

⚠️ 2025-08-01 | Microsoft's Windows Recall Allegedly Stores Passwords and Social Security Numbers in Preview Mode | View Incident

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