Amazon rolls out Alexa-powered voice shopping experience in India — from techcrunch.com by Manish Singh

Excerpt:

Amazon [on 3/12/20] rolled out an Alexa-enabled voice-powered shopping feature in India as the e-commerce giant looks for new ways to engage with customers in one of its key overseas markets.

Customers will be able to use Alexa to search for items on the e-commerce platform, add them to the cart and proceed to checkout — by tapping the in-app mic icon and saying commands such as “Alexa, show me sarees,” “Alexa, add saree to my cart” and “Alexa, go to checkout.”

 

AI laws are coming — from forbes.com by Kathleen Walch

Excerpt:

The pace of adoption for AI and cognitive technologies continues unabated with widespread, worldwide, rapid adoption. Adoption of AI by enterprises and organizations continues to grow, as evidenced by a recent survey showing growth across each of the seven patterns of AI. However, with this growth of adoption comes strain as existing regulation and laws struggle to deal with emerging challenges. As a result, governments around the world are moving quickly to ensure that existing laws, regulations, and legal constructs remain relevant in the face of technology change and can deal with new, emerging challenges posed by AI.

Research firm Cognilytica recently published a report on Worldwide AI Laws and Regulations that explores the latest legal and regulatory actions taken by countries around the world across nine different AI-relevant areas.

 

 

How AI can bridge the gap between business and IT — from technative.io

Excerpts:

Artificial intelligence and intelligent automation are changing how businesses function. How they collect data, capture information, present it, and leverage it to gain more customers, convert more visitors, and expand their operations.

According to Gartner, the global business value derived from AI will reach $3.9 trillion by 2022, through improved customer experience, reduced operating costs, and new revenue generation. Gartner also predicts that automating decision-making by harnessing unstructured data will be a key driving force of this trend- growing AI-derived value from just 2 percent in 2018 to 16 percent in 2022.

Also see:

Cybercrime, meet AI — from technative.io

Excerpt:

The value of AI in this model is that it lets companies take large volumes of information and find clusters of similarity. This is always the focus of cybersecurity to a degree, but organisations are often unequipped to do so in sufficient depth because of time and resourcing constraints. By contrast, AI can whittle down vast quantities of seemingly unrelated data into a few actionable incidents or outputs at speed, giving companies the ability to quickly pick out potential threats in a huge haystack.

The ability to quickly turn large amounts of data into actionable insights is something that cybersecurity teams are going to need in the coming years, because AI could become a formidable enemy. Unlike malware, which is purely automated, AI is beginning to mimic humans to a worryingly accurate degree. It can draw pictures, age photographs of people, write well enough to persuade people of truths – or lies.

 

Why law librarians are so important in a data-driven world — from Oxford University Press (blog.oup.com) by Femi Cadmus

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Looking ahead, the integration of technology in the work of law librarians will only increase. Over 90% of government law library employees say that artificial intelligence or machine learning has already affected their workflow by automating routine tasks. Over a quarter of law firms or corporations now have at least one active artificial intelligence initiative. Of those, more than half involve the library. It is therefore not surprising that the skills law library employees plan to develop in the next two years include artificial intelligence or machine learning, data analytics, and blockchain (in that order).

 

How higher education can adapt to the future of work — from weforum.org by Farnam Jahanian, President, Carnegie Mellon University; with thanks to Evan Kirstel for sharing this here

Excerpts:

Embrace the T-shaped approach to knowledge
The broad set of skills needed by tomorrow’s workforce also affects our approach to educational structure. At Carnegie Mellon University—like many other institutions—we have been making disciplinary boundaries much more porous and have launched programmes at the edges and intersections of traditional fields, such as behavioral economics, computational biology, and the nexus of design, arts, and technology. We believe this approach prepares our students for a future where thinking and working across boundaries will be vital. The value of combining both breadth and depth in higher education has also led to many universities embracing “T-shaped” teaching and learning philosophies, in which vertical (deep disciplinary) expertise is combined with horizontal (cross-cutting) knowledge.

Invest in personalised, technology-enhanced learning
The demand for more highly skilled workers continues to grow. Recent analysis of U.S. data by The Wall Street Journal found that more than 40% of manufacturing workers now have a college degree. By 2022, manufacturers are projected to employ more college graduates than workers with a high-school education or less. Technology-enhanced learning can help us keep up with demand and offer pathways for the existing workforce to gain new skills. AI-based learning tools developed in the past decade have incredible potential to personalise education, enhance college readiness and access, and improve educational outcomes. And perhaps most importantly, technology-enhanced learning has the compelling potential to narrow socioeconomic and racial achievement gaps among students.

The rapid pace of today’s advances requires a more comprehensive workforce and education strategy across a spectrum of measures, including policy, access, programmes and outreach. The private sector, government, educators and policy-makers must work together to deliver multiple pathways to opportunity for young people looking for their first foothold in the job market, as well as to re-skill and up-skill workers striving to maintain their place in the workforce. 

 

How innovations in voice technology are reshaping education — from edsurge.com by Diana Lee
Voice is the most accessible form you can think of when you think about any interface. In education, it’s already started to take off.

It could be basic questions about, “Am I taking a class to become X?” or “How strong are my skills relative to other people?” An assistant can help with that. It could potentially be a coach, something that follows you the rest of your life for education. I’m excited about that. People that can’t normally get access to this kind of information will get access to it. That’s the future.

From DSC:
The use of voice will likely be a piece of a next-generation learning platform.

Voice will likely be a piece of the next generation learning platform

 

Facial recognition startup Clearview AI says its full client list was stolen — from engadget.com by Igor Bonifacic

Excerpt:

You might expect a high-profile (and controversial) facial recognition startup like Clearview AI would have its data locked down, but it turns out it’s just as vulnerable as almost any other company to malicious individuals. In a notification obtained by The Daily Beast, the company says a recent vulnerability allowed someone to gain “unauthorized access” to a list of all of its customers. Clearview works with approximately 600 law enforcement agencies across North America, including the Chicago Police Department.

Also see:

 

 
 
 

The 2020 ABA Techshow

Also see:

EU Proposes Strict Regulations for AI — from futuretech360.com by John K. Waters

Excerpt:

The European Union this week unveiled its first proposed regulations for artificial intelligence (AI) technology, along with a strategy for handling personal digital data. The new regs provide guidance around such AI use cases as autonomous vehicles and biometric IDs.

Published online by the European Commission, the proposed regulations would apply to “high-risk” uses of AI in areas such as health care, transportation and criminal justice. The criteria to determine risk would include such considerations as whether a person might get hurt, say, by a self-driving car or a medical device, and how much influence a human has on an AI’s decision in areas like job recruiting and law enforcement.

 

 From DSC:
Here are two other example of AI’s further integration into the legal realm:

Casetext is Automating Litigation — from businesswire.com
Casetext’s new litigation automation technology, Compose, automates substantive legal work — and a substantial number of billable hours

Excerpt:

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Casetext, the legal technology company known for its groundbreaking A.I. legal research platform, today announces a new product that will define litigation automation: Compose. Compose, which automates the first draft of a legal brief, is poised to disrupt the $437 billion1 legal services industry and fundamentally change our understanding of what types of professional work are uniquely human.


UC Irvine School of Law To Integrate Blue J Legal’s AI-Enabled Tax Platform into Curriculum
— from businesswire.com
First of its kind initiative aims to prepare graduate students for careers in tax law where AI will be integral to the decision-making process

The joint effort aims to demonstrate why advanced technological integration in higher education is important and how to leverage it, specifically in tax law.

 

 

Cost cutting algorithms are making your job search a living hell — from vice.com by Nick Keppler
More companies are using automated job screening systems to vet candidates, forcing jobseekers to learn new and absurd tricks to have their résumés seen by a human.

Excerpts:

Companies are increasingly using automated systems to select who gets ahead and who gets eliminated from pools of applicants. For jobseekers, this can mean a series of bizarre, time-consuming tasks demanded by companies who have not shown any meaningful consideration of them.

Maneuvering around algorithmic gatekeepers to reach an actual person with a say in hiring has become a crucial skill, even if the tasks involved feel duplicitous and absurd. ATS software can also enable a company to discriminate, possibly unwittingly, based on bias-informed data and culling of certain psychological traits.

Until he started as a legal writer for FreeAdvice.com last month, Johnson, 36, said he was at potential employers’ whims. “I can’t imagine I’d move to the next round if I didn’t do what they said,” he told Motherboard.

 
 

Legal technology, today and tomorrow: Don’t get left behind — from law.com by Jenn Betts
Staying on top of these developments is no longer enough to “future proof” your practice or your firm. It is imperative to look forward to avoid falling behind.

Excerpt:

Among other kinds of disruptive AI-powered tools already on the market are:

  • Artificial intelligence-enabled document review tools and platforms (which make review of discovery materials quicker and cheaper);
  • Artificial intelligence-enabled tools assisting organizations with selecting outside counsel (which promise more data-driven assessments of “fit” between the firm, client and case);
  • Artificial intelligence patent search engines (which make patent searching easier and more accurate); and
  • Artificial intelligence-powered systems delivering early-stage litigation services, such as drafting answers to complaints, discovery requests and responses, and litigation timelines (which decreases client costs and delivers greater efficiencies).

These tools raise interesting (and largely unanswered) practical and ethical issues relating to the scope of the practice of law, AI disclosure obligations to clients, confidentiality issues regarding client data and the necessity of independent judgment by attorneys.

The pace of development of AI and other advanced technologies is moving at an unprecedented pace.

From DSC:
I agree. The pace of change has changed. It’s now an exponential pace of change. This new pace is having an increasing impact on the legal industry.

 

Four Artificial Intelligence (AI) trends in 2020 — from consultancy.uk; though this is from the U.K., it’s also likely very true for the U.S. and for other nations as well

Excerpts:

  • Enter the AI ethicist
  • Catalyst – the 5G effect
  • Introducing AI-as-a-Service
  • Putting solutions at the centre
 

Deloitte Legal to work with academic tech venture group — from artificiallawyer.com

Excerpt:

Deloitte Legal is to collaborate with Conception X, a nine-month programme designed to train PhD students in technology entrepreneurship and to support them in building ventures based on their original research during their degree.

Conception X accepts applications across several research areas including artificial intelligence, machine learning, genetic engineering, blockchain and quantum computing. The first two cohorts, prior to the link-up with Deloitte, have seen the start-ups incorporated by PhD teams collectively raising a total of £5m and generating revenues of £2m.

 

 
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