Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related

The blinding of justice: Technology, journalism and the law — from thehill.com by Kristian Hammond and Daniel Rodriguez

Excerpts:

The legal profession is in the early stages of a fundamental transformation driven by an entirely new breed of intelligent technologies and it is a perilous place for the profession to be.

If the needs of the law guide the ways in which the new technologies are put into use they can greatly advance the cause of justice. If not, the result may well be profits for those who design and sell the technologies but a legal system that is significantly less just.
…
We are entering an era of technology that goes well beyond the web. The law is seeing the emergence of systems based on analytics and cognitive computing in areas that until now have been largely immune to the impact of technology. These systems can predict, advise, argue and write and they are entering the world of legal reasoning and decision making.

Unfortunately, while systems built on the foundation of historical data and predictive analytics are powerful, they are also prone to bias and can provide advice that is based on incomplete or imbalanced data.
…
We are not arguing against the development of such technologies. The key question is who will guide them. The transformation of the field is in its early stages. There is still opportunity to ensure that the best intentions of the law are built into these powerful new systems so that they augment and aid rather than simply replace.

From DSC:
This is where we need more collaborations between those who know the law and those who know how to program, as well as other types of technologists.

The rise of the lawyer [Furlong]

On 10/01/2019, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Blockchain, Canada, change, changing business models, emerging technologies, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, society, by Daniel Christian

The rise of the lawyer — from law21.ca by Jordan Furlong

Per Jordan:

Earlier this year, I received an invitation to write the epilogue for a book called New Suits: Appetite for Disruption in the Legal World, by Michele DeStefano (founder of the groundbreaking Law Without Walls program based at the University of Miami Law School) and Guenther Dobrauz-Saldapenna (partner and leader of PwC Legal Switzerland and leader of PwC’s global legal tech efforts). New Suits is an enormously ambitious and illuminating exploration of the frontiers of technology-powered legal practice, especially for large enterprise clients and their outside counsel, and I highly recommend that you read it.

Of course, I’m no technology expert, and I felt supremely unqualified to say anything useful about the impact of blockchain, AI, RegTech, and so on. But I thought that lawyers who read New Suits, especially newly called lawyers or law students, might reach the end of the book feeling a little overwhelmed by the scale of change facing them, and wondering whether the legal world of the future would in any way resemble the one they had already entered — and if that world would need, want, or even welcome lawyers.

So I wrote what was essentially a message to those lawyers, to explain what all the forthcoming changes would mean for them, what the new legal world was going to demand of them, and what they should feel both empowered and required to demand in return. With the kind permission of the authors, and with a few small edits, here is that lengthy but heartfelt message.

So here’s what I’d very much like you to remember: What you do matters. Who you are matters. When you speak out, it has an impact. When you fall silent, that has an impact too. Do not let yourself get lost in the noise and complexity of the machine; do not lose sight of the primacy and power of true service; do not lose who you are, and who you could be, amid the upheaval and disruption to come. Out of this chaos, you can forge new meaning and greater purpose. Out of the end of one era in the legal profession’s history, you can launch the start of another.

Also see:

Alexa is up to 100,000 skills. How might these types of techs be integrated into education, training, learning spaces, collaboration, other?

On 09/28/2019, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, career development, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, communications, computer science, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, lifelong learning, microlearning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, programming, tools, training / L&D, trends, usability, user experience (UX), vendors, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Alexa is up to 100,000 skills. How might these types of techs be integrated into education, training, learning spaces, collaboration, other?

Celebrating 100,000 Alexa Skills -100,000 Thank Yous to You — from developer.amazon.com

Google’s war on deepfakes: As election looms, it shares ton of AI-faked videos [Tung]

On 09/27/2019, in A/V -- audio/visual, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, computer science, emerging technologies, ethics, Facebook / Meta Platforms, Google, Microsoft, morals/values, pace of change, platforms, political science, society, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, by Daniel Christian

Google’s war on deepfakes: As election looms, it shares ton of AI-faked videos — from zdnet.com by Liam Tung
Google has created 3,000 videos using actors and manipulation software to help improve detection.

Excerpt:

Google has released a huge database of deepfake videos that it’s created using paid actors. It hopes the database will bolster systems designed to detect AI-generated fake videos.

With the 2020 US Presidential elections looming, the race is on to build better systems to detect deepfake videos that could be used to manipulate and divide public opinion.

Earlier this month, Facebook and Microsoft announced a $10m project to create deepfake videos to help build systems for detecting them.

From DSC:
The two postings below show the need for more collaboration and the use of teams:

The future of law and computational technologies: Two sides of the same coin — from legaltechlever.com by Daniel Linna Jr.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

An increasing number of lawyers today work with allied professionals to improve processes, better manage projects, embrace data-driven methods, and leverage technology to improve legal services and systems. Legal-services and lawyer regulations are evolving. And basic technologies and AI are slowly making their way into the legal industry, from legal aid organizations and courts to large law firms, corporate legal departments, and governments.

If we are to realize the potential to improve society with computational technologies, law, regulation, and ethical principles must be front and center at every stage, from problem definition, design, data collection, and data cleaning to training, deployment, and monitoring and maintenance of products and systems. To achieve this, technologists and lawyers must collaborate and share a common vocabulary. Lawyers must learn about technology, and technologists must learn about law. Multidisciplinary teams with a shared commitment to law, regulation, and ethics can proactively address today’s AI challenges, and advance our collaborative problem-solving capabilities to address tomorrow’s increasingly complex problems. Lawyers and technologists must work together to create a better future for everyone.

From DSC:
As with higher education in general, we need more team-based efforts in the legal realm as well as more TrimTab Groups.

What’s a lawyer now? Law’s shift from practice to skill — from forbes.com by Mark Cohen

Excerpts:

Why does this distinction matter? Because law—like so many industries—is undergoing a tectonic shift. It is morphing from a lawyer dominated, practice-centric, labor-intensive guild to a tech-enabled, process and data-driven, multi-disciplinary global industry. The career paths, skills, and expectations of lawyers are changing. So too are how, when, and on what financial terms they are engaged; with whom and from what delivery models they work; their performance metrics, and the resources—human and machine—they collaborate with. Legal practice is shrinking and the business of delivering legal services is expanding rapidly.

Law is no longer the exclusive province of lawyers. Legal knowledge is not the sole element of legal delivery—business and technological competencies are equally important. It’s a new ballgame—one that most lawyers are unprepared for.
…
How did we get here and are legal careers for most a dead end? Spoiler alert: there’s tremendous opportunity in the legal industry. The caveat: all lawyers must have basic business and technological competency whether they pursue practice careers or leverage their legal knowledge as a skill in legal delivery and/or allied professional careers.

Upskilling the legal profession is already a key issue, a requisite for career success. Lawyers must learn new skills like project management, data analytics, deployment of technology, and process design to leverage their legal knowledge. Simply knowing the law will not cut it anymore.

From DSC:
I really appreciate the work of the above two men whose articles I’m highlighting here. I continue to learn a lot from them and am grateful for their work.

That said, just like it’s a lot to expect a faculty member (in higher ed) who teaches online to not only be a subject matter expert, but also to be skilled in teaching, web design, graphic design, navigation design, information design, audio design, video editing, etc…it’s a lot to expect for a lawyer to be a skilled lawyer, business person, and technician. I realize that Mark was only saying a basic level of competency…but even that can be difficult to achieve at times. Why? Because people have different skillsets, passions, and interests. One might be a good lawyer, but not a solid technician…or vice versa. One might be a solid professor, but isn’t very good with graphic design.

Artificial Intelligence in Future and Present [datafloq]

On 09/26/2019, in accessibility / UDL, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), career development, corporate / business world, digital storytelling, drama/theater, education, education technology, future, game-changing environment, health, ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, IT in HE, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, legislatures / government / legal, media/film, Mixed Reality (MR), Natural Language Processing (NLP), personalized/customized learning, platforms, society, story, storytelling, student-related, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Artificial Intelligence in Future and Present — from datafloq.com
A look at what AI might do and what it can actually do in various industries…

Artificial Intelligence and Medicine
Artificial Intelligence and Finance
Artificial Intelligence and Manufacturing
Artificial Intelligence and Media & Entertainment
Artificial Intelligence and Education

Top jobs in 2040 will involve virtual reality, artificial intelligence & robotics [Williamson]

On 09/25/2019, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, change, emerging technologies, engineering, ethics, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, robotics, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, XR - extended reality, youth, by Daniel Christian

Top jobs in 2040 will involve virtual reality, artificial intelligence & robotics — from themanufacturer.com by Jonny Williamson
Emerging technologies such as virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics will strongly influence the careers we do in the future, according to new research from BAE Systems.

Excerpt:

Almost half of young people (47%) aged between 16-24 believe that one day they will work in a role that doesn’t exist yet, but only one-in-five (18%) think they are equipped with the skills required to future-proof their careers.
.
Three-quarters (74%) also feel that they are not getting enough information about careers that will be available in the future.

For a look at how #AI is being integrated into various industries, check out this article from Forbes

On 09/23/2019, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, career development, computer science, corporate / business world, emerging technologies, engineering, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
For a look at how #AI is being integrated into various industries, check out the article below.

AI 50: America’s Most Promising Artificial Intelligence Companies — from forbes.com by Jillian D’Onfro

Excerpts:

Artificial intelligence is infiltrating every industry, allowing vehicles to navigate without drivers, assisting doctors with medical diagnoses, and mimicking the way humans speak. But for all the authentic and exciting ways it’s transforming the tasks computers can perform, there’s a lot of hype, too.
…
The inherently broad term gets bandied about so often that it can start to feel meaningless and gets trotted out by companies to gussy up even simple data analysis. To help cut through the noise, Forbes and data partner Meritech Capital put together a list of private, U.S.-based companies that are wielding some subset of artificial intelligence in a meaningful way and demonstrating real business potential from doing so.
…
The honorees span categories like human resources, security, insurance, and finance, with healthcare, transportation, and infrastructure startups best represented on the list.

A momentous change in the legal industry garnering little attention — from forbes.com by Hendrik Pretorius

Excerpt:

The needed evolution in legal service delivery may receive a big push in the near future. Surprisingly, this issue seems to be flying under the radar for many in the legal industry.

The California Bar, through its Task Force on Access Through Innovation of Legal Services, created in 2018, seeks to “identify possible regulatory changes to enhance the delivery of, and access to, legal services through the use of technology, including artificial intelligence and online legal service delivery models.”

A report commissioned by this task force stated that “[m]odifying the ethics rules to facilitate greater collaboration across law and other disciplines will (1) drive down costs; (2) improve access; (3) increase predictability and transparency of legal services; (4) aid the growth of new businesses; and (5) elevate the reputation of the legal profession.”

Herein lies one of the fundamental challenges within the legal industry: viewing the law as the delivery of a legal product, and understanding that this delivery needs to revolve around the user, not the lawyer. There is a real and growing divide between the current model of legal service delivery put forth by a traditional law firm model and what the public wants. Consumers have raised the bar based on what they are experiencing in interacting with other businesses in other industries.
…
I love what many of these legal tech companies are doing: They are applying standards from outside the entrenched legal industry and changing entire delivery models. This should be a real wake-up call. But how can law firms truly compete and play a role?

Reflections on “DIY Mindset Reshaping Education” [Schaffhauser]

On 09/17/2019, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, CMS/LMS, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, consortiums, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, Cost of legal services - including access, credentialing, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, distance education, education, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, law schools, leadership, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, learning theories, lifelong learning, marketplaces, microlearning, mobile learning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, Natural Language Processing (NLP), new business models, new media literacies, online learning, online media, online tutoring, organizational change, pace of change, personalized/customized learning, platforms, reinvent, society, staying relevant, streams of content, student-related, surviving, by Daniel Christian

DIY Mindset Reshaping Education — from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser

Excerpt:

A do-it-yourself mindset is changing the face of education worldwide, according to new survey results. Learners are “patching together” their education from a “menu of options,” including self-teaching, short courses and bootcamps, and they believe that self-service instruction will become even more prevalent for lifelong learning. In the United Sates specifically, 84 percent of people said learning would become even more self-service the older they get.

Among those who have needed to reskill in the last two years to continue doing their jobs, 42 percent found information online and taught themselves and 41 percent took a course or training offered by their employers, a professional association or bootcamp, compared to just 28 percent who pursued a professional certification program, 25 percent who enrolled in a university-level degree program or 12 percent who did nothing.

If people had to learn something new for their career quickly, they said they would be more likely turn to a short training program (47 percent), followed by access to a free resource such as YouTube, Lynda.com or Khan Academy (33 percent). A smaller share (20 percent) would head to an accredited university or college.

From DSC:
This is why the prediction from Thomas Frey carries weight and why I’ve been tracking a new learning platform for the 21st century. Given:

The exponential pace of technological change occurring in many societies throughout the globe

That emerging technologies are game-changers in many industries
That people will need to learn about those emerging technologies and how to leverage/use them <– if they want to remain marketable/employed
That people need to reinvent themselves quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively
That many people can’t afford the time nor the funding necessary these days to acquire a four-year higher ed degree
That running new courses, programs, etc. through committees, faculty senates, etc. takes a great deal of time…and time is something we no longer have (given this new pace of change)

…there needs to be a new, up-to-date, highly responsive, inexpensive learning-related platform for the 21st century. I call this learning platform of the future, “Learning from the Living [Class] Room.” And while it requires subject matter experts / humans in significant ways, AI and other technologies will be embedded throughout such a platform.

“I’ve been predicting that by 2030 the largest company on the internet is going to be an education-based company that we haven’t heard of yet,” Frey, the senior futurist at the DaVinci Institute think tank, tells Business Insider.

— source

Addendum on 9/18/19:

Education Startup Launches Online Courses for College Credit — from campustechnology.com by Sara Friedman

For $400 per course, students will be able to gain access to course videos that are cinematically filmed and taught by “some of the brightest minds in academia.” Outlier.org students will also have access to problem sets, one-on-one tutoring and assessments proctored through artificial intelligence.

5 emerging tech trends impacting the enterprise — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Excerpts:

Gartner’s Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle focuses specifically on new technologies (not previously highlighted in past Hype Cycles) that “show promise in delivering a high degree of competitive advantage over the next five to 10 years.” The five most impactful trends to watch this year are:

Sensing and mobility.
Augmented human.
Postclassical compute and comms.
Digital ecosystems.
Advanced AI and analytics.

Someone is always listening — from Future Today Institute

Excerpt:

Very Near-Futures Scenarios (2020 – 2022):

Optimistic: Big tech and consumer device industries agree to a single set of standards to inform people when they are being listened to. Devices now emit an audible ping and/ or a visible light anytime they are actively recording sound. While they need to store data in order to improve natural language understanding and other important AI systems, consumers now have access to a portal and can see, listen to, and erase their data at any time. In addition, consumers can choose to opt-out of storing their data to help improve AI systems.
Pragmatic: Big tech and consumer device industries preserve the status quo, which leads to more cases of machine eavesdropping and erodes public trust. Federal agencies open investigations into eavesdropping practices, which leads to a drop in share prices and a concern that more advanced biometric technologies could face debilitating regulation.
Catastrophic: Big tech and consumer device industries collect and store our conversations surreptitiously while developing new ways to monetize that data. They anonymize and sell it to developers wanting to create their own voice apps or to research institutions wanting to do studies using real-world conversation. Some platforms develop lucrative fee structures allowing others access to our voice data: business intelligence firms, market research agencies, polling agencies, political parties and individual law enforcement organizations. Consumers have little to no ability to see and understand how their voice data are being used and by whom. Opting out of collection systems is intentionally opaque. Trust erodes. Civil unrest grows.

Action Meter:

Watchlist:

Google; Apple; Amazon; Microsoft; Salesforce; BioCatch; CrossMatch; ThreatMetrix; Electronic Frontier Foundation; World Privacy Forum; American Civil Liberties Union; IBM; Baidu; Tencent; Alibaba; Facebook; Electronic Frontier Foundation; European Union; government agencies worldwide.

Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education: Applications, Promise and Perils, and Ethical Questions — from er.educause.edu by Elana Zeide
What are the benefits and challenges of using artificial intelligence to promote student success, improve retention, streamline enrollment, and better manage resources in higher education?

Excerpt:

The promise of AI applications lies partly in their efficiency and partly in their efficacy. AI systems can capture a much wider array of data, at more granularity, than can humans. And these systems can do so in real time. They can also analyze many, many students—whether those students are in a classroom or in a student body or in a pool of applicants. In addition, AI systems offer excellent observations and inferences very quickly and at minimal cost. These efficiencies will lead, we hope, to increased efficacy—to more effective teaching, learning, institutional decisions, and guidance. So this is one promise of AI: that it will show us things we can’t assess or even envision given the limitations of human cognition and the difficulty of dealing with many different variables and a wide array of students.
…
A second peril in the use of artificial intelligence in higher education consists of the various legal considerations, mostly involving different bodies of privacy and data-protection law. Federal student-privacy legislation is focused on ensuring that institutions (1) get consent to disclose personally identifiable information and (2) give students the ability to access their information and challenge what they think is incorrect.7 The first is not much of an issue if institutions are not sharing the information with outside parties or if they are sharing through the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which means an institution does not have to get explicit consent from students. The second requirement—providing students with access to the information that is being used about them—is going to be an increasingly interesting issue.8 I believe that as the decisions being made by artificial intelligence become much more significant and as students become more aware of what is happening, colleges and universities will be pressured to show students this information. People are starting to want to know how algorithmic and AI decisions are impacting their lives.

My short advice about legal considerations? Talk to your lawyers. The circumstances vary considerably from institution to institution.

What enterprises intend to do with artificial intelligence [McKendrick]

On 09/10/2019, in 21st century, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, intelligent systems, legal technologies, technology (general), tools, training / L&D, workplace, by Daniel Christian

What enterprises intend to do with artificial intelligence — from zdnet.com by Joe McKendrick
Survey shows business process automation and customer support are the low-hanging fruit with initial AI rollouts, but many organizations are moving on to tackle data analytics.

Excerpt:

The leading categories of use cases seeing AI investments and work include the following:

Business process automation 49%
Customer support/Chatbots 47%
Data extraction 43%
Contract analytics 28%
Voice/video processing/imaging 25%

Technology as Part of the Culture for Legal Professionals [Grush & Christian]

On 09/09/2019, in 21st century, adult learning, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Blockchain, bots, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, communities of practice, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, education, emerging technologies, engineering, future, game-changing environment, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, intelligent systems, law schools, leadership, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, lifelong learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), online learning, pace of change, platforms, political science, professional development, reinvent, society, staying relevant, technologies for your home, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, tools, trends, United States, by Daniel Christian

Technology as Part of the Culture for Legal Professionals A Q&A with Daniel Christian — from campustechnology.com by Mary Grush and Daniel Christian

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Mary Grush: Why should new technologies be part of a legal education?

Daniel Christian: I think it’s a critical point because our society, at least in the United States — and many other countries as well — is being faced with a dramatic influx of emerging technologies. Whether we are talking about artificial intelligence, blockchain, Bitcoin, chatbots, facial recognition, natural language processing, big data, the Internet of Things, advanced robotics — any of dozens of new technologies — this is the environment that we are increasingly living in, and being impacted by, day to day.

It is so important for our nation that legal professionals — lawyers, judges, attorney generals, state representatives, and legislators among them — be up to speed as much as possible on the technologies that surround us: What are the issues their clients and constituents face? It’s important that legal professionals regularly pulse check the relevant landscapes to be sure that they are aware of the technologies that are coming down the pike. To help facilitate this habit, technology should be part of the culture for those who choose a career in law. (And what better time to help people start to build that habit than within the law schools of our nation?)

There is a real need for the legal realm to catch up with some of these emerging technologies, because right now, there aren’t many options for people to pursue. If the lawyers, and the legislators, and the judges don’t get up to speed, the “wild wests” out there will continue until they do.

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