Claim LD04-SL-C10 (v1.0)

In a three-month randomized trial with 133 patent lawyers, AI assistance raised graded drafting quality by 0.38 standard deviations at 90 days; on a later task done without AI, treated seniors scored 0.45 standard deviations higher than control seniors, treated juniors no higher (−0.03), and the senior–junior difference was statistically significant.

Provenance and status

Claim type: ESTIMATE (as printed: “ESTIMATE”)
Publication status: ELIGIBLE (INSTITUTIONAL_POSITION) (as printed: “ELIGIBLE WITH INSTITUTIONAL-POSITION QUALIFIER”)
Verification state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY (as printed: “CONTENT VERIFIED”; verified by: UNKNOWN)
Does not license: That AI erodes junior skill (juniors did not fall below controls); effects beyond three months; why the gap appears (the authors say the experiment does not answer why)
Source (field 6, as printed): Autor, Rodchenko, Martin, Iscenko, Strand, Pearl & Ferere, “Does AI Assistance Enhance or Erode Expertise? Evidence from a Three-Month Field Experiment in Patent Drafting,” NBER Working Paper 35720, 2026
Source type (field 7): WORKING_PAPER (as printed: “Academic working paper”)
Institutional position: Mixed
Maturity (claim evidence / publication maturity): EMERGING (as printed: “EMERGING”)
Recorded date: 2026-10-14
Currentness / correction: This is the current version. No correction or concern relation is recorded on its Sources.

Version

Pinned version v1.0 (entry LD04-SL-C10--v1.0) — this page never floats to newer evidence.

This pinned version is also the current version.

Versions:v1.0 · current

Pinned Sources (field 6, version-specific)

“Autor, Rodchenko, Martin, Iscenko, Strand, Pearl & Ferere, “Does AI Assistance Enhance or Erode Expertise? Evidence from a Three-Month Field Experiment in Patent Drafting,” NBER Working Paper 35720, 2026” → SRC-SL-AUTOR-ET-AL-NBER-35720--v1.0 — Autor, Rodchenko, Martin, Iscenko, Strand, Pearl & Ferere, “Does AI Assistance Enhance or Erode Expertise? Evidence from a Three-Month Field Experiment in Patent Drafting,” NBER Working Paper 35720, 2026; class WORKING_PAPER (explicit public provenance pin)

All 25 canonical Claim fields (raw values and normalized values)

#	Canonical field	Canonical value (verbatim)	Normalized (Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2)
1	CLAIM ID	LD04-SL-C10	—
2	PUBLIC-FACING CLAIM	In a three-month randomized trial with 133 patent lawyers, AI assistance raised graded drafting quality by 0.38 standard deviations at 90 days; on a later task done without AI, treated seniors scored 0.45 standard deviations higher than control seniors, treated juniors no higher (−0.03), and the senior–junior difference was statistically significant.	—
3	CLAIM TYPE	ESTIMATE	base_types: ESTIMATE
4	RESEARCH STRAND	B — Skill after the tool is removed	—
5	MATURITY	EMERGING	states: EMERGING
6	SOURCE	Autor, Rodchenko, Martin, Iscenko, Strand, Pearl & Ferere, “Does AI Assistance Enhance or Erode Expertise? Evidence from a Three-Month Field Experiment in Patent Drafting,” NBER Working Paper 35720, 2026	source_ids: SRC-SL-AUTOR-ET-AL-NBER-35720
7	SOURCE TYPE	Academic working paper	classes: WORKING_PAPER
8	INSTITUTIONAL POSITION	Mixed	—
9	SCOPE	133 patent lawyers at 11 US IP firms that all draft patents for Google; juniors have under seven years’ experience	—
10	DESIGN	Preregistered three-month randomized field experiment (2:1 treatment), stratified by firm and experience; blind grading by attorneys at an independent firm	—
11	SAMPLE / DATASET	133 lawyers; 91 completed the final unaided redlining task	—
12	MODEL / TOOL / VERSION	Generative-AI drafting assistance (tool details not reported here)	—
13	COMPARATOR	Lawyers randomized to draft without AI	—
14	MAIN RESULT	With AI, +0.34 SD at 10 days and +0.38 SD at 90 days, from less weak work rather than more excellent work; unaided redlining at 90 days: treated +0.32 SD overall, seniors +0.45 SD, juniors −0.03 SD (SE 0.20); the senior effect is significantly larger (p = 0.04); treated juniors became more dispersed	—
15	INFERENTIAL TARGET	Whether three months of AI-assisted drafting changes unaided professional judgement, by experience	—
16	DOES NOT LICENSE	That AI erodes junior skill (juniors did not fall below controls); effects beyond three months; why the gap appears (the authors say the experiment does not answer why)	—
17	VERIFICATION STATE	CONTENT VERIFIED	state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY · verified_by: UNKNOWN
18	LIMITATIONS	Not peer reviewed; small junior subgroup; attrition of 21–32% across tasks, not differential by treatment; no baseline skill test; AI non-use during the unaided task not directly observed; conflict of interest: the study was conducted by Google, six of seven authors are Google employees, Google paid direct costs and all firms draft for Google; checked against the version dated 7 October 2026	—
19	CONTRADICTORY / SUPPORTING SOURCES	Fits compression while assisted but widening in retained skill; contrasts with retained gains in routine customer support	—
20	GEOGRAPHY / LANGUAGE	US / English	—
21	DISTRIBUTIONAL LEDGER	Seniors convert assisted practice into unaided skill; juniors split between improving and falling behind	—
22	R01 / FIELD-MAP LINKS	LD-04, D2, D3	—
23	WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS CLAIM?	Peer review, an independent replication, or a longer follow-up with a baseline skill test	—
24	PUBLICATION STATUS	ELIGIBLE WITH INSTITUTIONAL-POSITION QUALIFIER	state: ELIGIBLE · qualifiers: INSTITUTIONAL_POSITION
25	RECORDED DATE	2026-10-14	—

Field 22 references resolved against Field Map v0.2: LD-04 (LIVING_DEBATE); D2 (DOMAIN); D3 (DOMAIN)

Cited by Living Debate versions

LD-04 v0.1

Research-of-record provenance

Materialized by sociolens-materializer 0.6.0 at 2026-09-28T20:00:00.000Z; normalization contract SocioLens — Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2 — Pre-Spike Materialization Contract (v1.0.2). Content seal SHA-256 0f5223206c3657b2f2f9d041ac4f439e75cf49448a6033139f9eda30d8031214.

Repository-authored inputs (not Drive exports)

SocioLens claim — LD04-SL-C10 v1.0 (v1.0) — written in the SocioLens repository by Project Lead (Claude, AI) on 2026-10-14; no Drive identity exists. Authority: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 14 October 2026 to build the LD-04 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-04 source notes, checked against full texts or official abstracts. Block “ENTRY 10 — LD04-SL-C10” SHA-256 af46745035e29c81d81ef619570afc851173c6a6eca45e6100be2fb4c6660960; fixture fixtures/authored/claims/LD04-SL-C10--v1.0.

Builder decisions (not Drive data)

VERSION = v1.0 — basis: Claim version taken from the repository-authored claim fixture version (SocioLens claim — LD04-SL-C10 v1.0); the first version of a new Claim of the LD-04 debate
CURRENT_POINTER = true — basis: repository-authored claim "SocioLens claim — LD04-SL-C10 v1.0" (Project Lead (Claude, AI), 2026-10-14); basis: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 14 October 2026 to build the LD-04 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-04 source notes, checked against full texts or official abstracts
FIELD_6_SOURCE_REFERENCE = SRC-SL-AUTOR-ET-AL-NBER-35720--v1.0 — basis: field 6 of ENTRY 10 — LD04-SL-C10 cites "Autor, Rodchenko, Martin, Iscenko, Strand, Pearl & Ferere, “Does AI Assistance Enhance or Erode Expertise? Evidence from a Three-Month Field Experiment in Patent Drafting,” NBER Working Paper 35720, 2026"; the only field-6 segment of this ClaimVersion's repository-authored ledger block.
SOURCE_PROVENANCE_PIN = SRC-SL-AUTOR-ET-AL-NBER-35720--v1.0 — basis: explicit version-pinned public provenance of this ClaimVersion (Amendment v1.2 §6): the pinned field-6 Source record "Autor, Rodchenko, Martin, Iscenko, Strand, Pearl & Ferere, “Does AI Assistance Enhance or Erode Expertise? Evidence from a Three-Month Field Experiment in Patent Drafting,” NBER Working Paper 35720, 2026".