legislatures / government / legal

I hope this tech doesn’t make it…

On 04/29/2019, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, Daniel S. Christian, digital video, ethics, Europe, ideas, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, morals/values, society, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, by Daniel Christian

DARPA is reportedly eyeing a high-tech contact lens straight out of ‘Mission: Impossible’ — from taskandpurpose.com by Jared Keller

Excerpt:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is reportedly interested in a new wirelessly-connected contact lens recently unveiled in France, the latest in the agency’s ongoing search for small-scale technology to augment U.S. service members’ visual capabilities in the field.

From DSC:
We may not be there yet (and in my mind, that’s a good thing). But when this tech gets further developed and gets its foot in the door — military style — it may then expand its reach and scope. Then it gets integrated into other areas of society. If many people were very uncomfortable having someone walk in a public place wearing/using a pair of Google Glasses, how will they/we feel about this one? Speaking for myself, I don’t like it.

From LinkedIn.com today:

Also see:

First drone delivery company gains approval in the U.S. — from futuretimeline.net
A Google/Alphabet offshoot company, Wing Aviation, has become the first drone delivery service to receive Air Carrier Certification from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

From DSC:
I don’t like this at all. If this foot gets in the door, vendor after vendor will launch their own hordes of drones. In the future, where will we go if we want some piece and quiet? Will the air be filled with swarms of noisy drones? Will we be able to clearly see the sun? An exaggeration..? Maybe…maybe not.

But, now what? What recourse do citizens have? Readers of this blog know that I’m generally pro-technology. But the folks — especially the youth — working within the FAANG companies (and the like) need to do a far better job asking, “Just because we can do something, should we do it?”

As I’ve said before, we’ve turned over the keys to the $137,000 Maserati to drivers who are just getting out of driving school. Then we wonder….”How did we get to this place?”

If you owned this $137,000+ car, would you turn the keys of it over to your 16-25 year old?!

As another example, just because we can…

…doesn’t mean we should.

Legal Services Innovation Index

On 04/23/2019, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, cost of getting a degree, Cost of legal services - including access, emerging technologies, innovation, intelligent systems, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Legal Services Innovation Index

Excerpts:

“This index should also be a resource for law schools and law students. It will help law schools better understand the evolution of the legal landscape, which will help them better prepare their students for the future. Law students can use this index to learn more about how the profession is changing and the knowledge and skills that they should develop for long-term success. The index also aims to provide law students information about the law firms recruiting them as well as a framework for assessing each law firm’s strategies for the future. Again, I caution that this index is simply an initial attempt to measure indicators of innovation and various weaknesses have been acknowledged. That said, the index and this initial information provides a starting point for very important discussions.”

“The problem to be solved is the lack of access to legal services. Experts estimate that approximately 80 percent of the impoverished and 50 percent of the middle class lack access to legal services.”

We Built an ‘Unbelievable’ (but Legal) Facial Recognition Machine — from nytimes.com by Sahil Chinoy

“The future of human flourishing depends upon facial recognition technology being banned,” wrote Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern, and Evan Selinger, a professor of philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, last year. ‘Otherwise, people won’t know what it’s like to be in public without being automatically identified, profiled, and potentially exploited.’ Facial recognition is categorically different from other forms of surveillance, Mr. Hartzog said, and uniquely dangerous. Faces are hard to hide and can be observed from far away, unlike a fingerprint. Name and face databases of law-abiding citizens, like driver’s license records, already exist. And for the most part, facial recognition surveillance can be set up using cameras already on the streets.” — Sahil Chinoy; per a weekly e-newsletter from Sam DeBrule at Machine Learnings in Berkeley, CA

Excerpt:

Most people pass through some type of public space in their daily routine — sidewalks, roads, train stations. Thousands walk through Bryant Park every day. But we generally think that a detailed log of our location, and a list of the people we’re with, is private. Facial recognition, applied to the web of cameras that already exists in most cities, is a threat to that privacy.

To demonstrate how easy it is to track people without their knowledge, we collected public images of people who worked near Bryant Park (available on their employers’ websites, for the most part) and ran one day of footage through Amazon’s commercial facial recognition service. Our system detected 2,750 faces from a nine-hour period (not necessarily unique people, since a person could be captured in multiple frames). It returned several possible identifications, including one frame matched to a head shot of Richard Madonna, a professor at the SUNY College of Optometry, with an 89 percent similarity score. The total cost: about $60.

From DSC:
What do you think about this emerging technology and its potential impact on our society — and on other societies like China? Again I ask…what kind of future do we want?

As for me, my face is against the use of facial recognition technology in the United States — as I don’t trust where this could lead.

This wild, wild, west situation continues to develop. For example, note how AI and facial recognition get their foot in the door via techs installed years ago:

The cameras in Bryant Park were installed more than a decade ago so that people could see whether the lawn was open for sunbathing, for example, or check how busy the ice skating rink was in the winter. They are not intended to be a security device, according to the corporation that runs the park.

So Amazon’s use of facial recognition is but another foot in the door.

This needs to be stopped. Now.

Facial recognition technology is a menace disguised as a gift. It’s an irresistible tool for oppression that’s perfectly suited for governments to display unprecedented authoritarian control and an all-out privacy-eviscerating machine.

We should keep this Trojan horse outside of the city. (source)

AI’s white guy problem isn’t going away [Hao]

On 04/20/2019, in 21st century, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, intelligent systems, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, society, sociology, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, by Daniel Christian

AI’s white guy problem isn’t going away — from technologyreview.com by Karen Hao
A new report says current initiatives to fix the field’s diversity crisis are too narrow and shallow to be effective.

Excerpt:

The numbers tell the tale of the AI industry’s dire lack of diversity. Women account for only 18% of authors at leading AI conferences, 20% of AI professorships, and 15% and 10% of research staff at Facebook and Google, respectively. Racial diversity is even worse: black workers represent only 2.5% of Google’s entire workforce and 4% of Facebook’s and Microsoft’s. No data is available for transgender people and other gender minorities—but it’s unlikely the trend is being bucked there either.

This is deeply troubling when the influence of the industry has dramatically grown to affect everything from hiring and housing to criminal justice and the military. Along the way, the technology has automated the biases of its creators to alarming effect: devaluing women’s résumés, perpetuating employment and housing discrimination, and enshrining racist policing practices and prison convictions.

Along these lines, also see:

‘Disastrous’ lack of diversity in AI industry perpetuates bias, study finds — from by theguardian.com by Kari Paul
Report says an overwhelmingly white and male field has reached ‘a moment of reckoning’ over discriminatory systems

Excerpt:

Lack of diversity in the artificial intelligence field has reached “a moment of reckoning”, according to new findings published by a New York University research center. A “diversity disaster” has contributed to flawed systems that perpetuate gender and racial biases found the survey, published by the AI Now Institute, of more than 150 studies and reports.

The AI field, which is overwhelmingly white and male, is at risk of replicating or perpetuating historical biases and power imbalances, the report said. Examples cited include image recognition services making offensive classifications of minorities, chatbots adopting hate speech, and Amazon technology failing to recognize users with darker skin colors. The biases of systems built by the AI industry can be largely attributed to the lack of diversity within the field itself, the report said.

DC: What kind of future do we want? #LawSchools #legislatures #society #EmergingTechnologies #citizens #governments #lawyers #legal #laws https://t.co/ICLkJY0yKP

— Daniel Christian (@dchristian5) April 19, 2019

Addendum on 4/20/19:

Amazon is now making its delivery drivers take selfies — from theverge.com by Shannon Liao
It will then use facial recognition to double-check

From DSC:
I don’t like this piece re: Amazon’s use of facial recognition at all. Some organization like Amazon asserts that they need facial recognition to deliver services to its customers, and then, the next thing we know, facial recognition gets its foot in the door…sneaks in the back way into society’s house. By then, it’s much harder to get rid of. We end up with what’s currently happening in China. I don’t want to pay for anything with my face. Ever. As Mark Zuckerberg has demonstrated time and again, I don’t trust humankind to handle this kind of power. Plus, the developing surveillance states by several governments is a chilling thing indeed. China is using it to identify/track Muslims.

Can you think of some “groups” that people might be in that could be banned from receiving goods and services? I can.

The appalling lack of privacy that’s going on in several societies throughout the globe has got to be stopped.

The Privacy Project from the New York Times

On 04/17/2019, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Amazon, analytics, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, dangers of the status quo, data related items, ethics, Facebook / Meta Platforms, global / globalization, Google, human-computer interaction (HCI), intelligent systems, internet, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, society, by Daniel Christian

Example articles from the Privacy Project:

James Bennet: Do You Know What You’ve Given Up?
A. G. Sulzberger: How The Times Thinks About Privacy
Samantha Irby: I Don’t Care. I Love My Phone.
Tim Wu: How Capitalism Betrayed Privacy

Through the legal looking glass [LOD & Jordan Furlong]

On 04/13/2019, in 21st century, career development, change, future, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, society, sociology, staying relevant, UK, United States, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Through the legal looking glass — from lodlaw.com by Lawyers On Demand (LOD) & Jordan Furlong

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

But here’s the thing: Even though most lawyers’ career paths have twisted and turned and looped back in unexpected directions, the landscape over which they’ve zig-zagged these past few decades has been pretty smooth, sedate and predictable. The course of these lawyers’ careers might not have been foreseeable, but for the most part, the course of the legal profession was, and that made the twists and turns easier to navigate.

Today’s lawyers, or anyone who enters the legal profession in the coming years, probably won’t be as fortunate. The fundamental landscape of the law is being remade as we speak, and the next two decades in particular will feature upheavals and disruptions at a pace and on a scale we’ve not seen before — following and matching similar tribulations in the wider world. This report is meant to advise you of the likeliest (but by no means certain) nature and direction of the fault lines along which the legal career landscape will fracture and remake itself in the coming years. Our hope is to help you anticipate these developments and adjust your own career plans in response, on the fly if necessary.

So, before you proceed any further into this report — before you draw closer to answering the question, “Will I still want to be a lawyer tomorrow?” — you need to think about why you’re a lawyer today.

…

Starting within the next five years or so, we should begin to see more lawyers drawn towards fulfilling the profession’s vocational or societal role, rather than choosing to pursue a private-sector commercial path. This will happen because:

generational change will bring new attitudes to the profession,
technological advances will reduce private legal work opportunities, and
a series of public crises will drive more lawyers by necessity towards societal roles.

…
It seems likely enough, in fact, that we’re leaving the era in which law was predominantly viewed as a safe, prestigious, private career, and entering one in which law is just as often considered a challenging, self-sacrificial, public career. More lawyers will find themselves grouped with teachers, police officers, and social workers — positions that pay decently but not spectacularly, that play a difficult but critical role in the civic order. We could call this the rising career path of the civic lawyer.
…
But if your primary or even sole motivation for entering the law is to become a wealthy member of the financial and political elite, then we suggest you should start looking for alternatives now. These types of careers will be fewer and farther between, and we suspect they will be increasingly at odds with the emerging spirit and character of the profession.

A prediction (which they admit can be a fool’s errand):
Amazon buys LegalZoom in the US as part of its entry into the global services sector, offering discounted legal services to Prime members. Regulators’ challenges will fail, signalling the beginning of the end of lawyer control of the legal market.

Legal Battle Over Captioning Continues — from insidehighered.com by Lindsay McKenzie
A legal dispute over video captions continues after court rejects requests by MIT and Harvard University to dismiss lawsuits accusing them of discriminating against deaf people.

Excerpt:

Two high-profile civil rights lawsuits filed by the National Association of the Deaf against Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are set to continue after requests to dismiss the cases were recently denied for the second time.

The two universities were accused by the NAD in 2015 of failing to make their massive open online courses, guest lectures and other video content accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Some of the videos, many of which were hosted on the universities’ YouTube channels, did have captions — but the NAD complained that these captions were sometimes so bad that the content was still inaccessible.

Spokespeople for both Harvard and MIT declined to comment on the ongoing litigation but stressed that their institutions were committed to improving web accessibility.

10 predictions for the future of the IoT [Banafa]

On 04/03/2019, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, data related items, emerging technologies, future, intelligent systems, internet, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, workplace, by Daniel Christian

10 predictions for the future of the IoT — from bbntimes.com by Ahmed Banafa

Also see:

How Artificial Intelligence will kickstart the Internet of Things — from bbntimes.com by Ahmed Banafa
Excerpt:
Examples of such IoT data:
- Data that helps cities predict accidents and crimes
- Data that gives doctors real-time insight into information from pacemakers or biochips
- Data that optimize productivity across industries through predictive maintenance on equipment and machinery
- Data that creates truly smart homes with connected appliances
- Data that provides critical communication between self-driving cars

Hot tech jobs for law grads [Morris]

On 04/02/2019, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, change, corporate / business world, emerging technologies, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, tools, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Hot tech jobs for law grads — from The National Jurist by Angela Morris

Excerpts:

A law degree has always been a versatile tool, but as technology brings significant change to the legal field, new career options continue to emerge.

Privacy manager
Legal operations
Legal solutions architect
Legal engineer
Data analyst
Cybersecurity professional
Open-source code compliance
Project manager for technology companies
Compliance pro
Knowledge manager
Risk manager
Bioethicist
Technology transfer officer
Banking compliance officer
IP protection specialist in the fashion industry
Digital asset protection
Litigation support professional
eDiscovery consultant

Also see:

Blockchain for legal issues: How distributed ledger tech, regulations and lawyers see the future — from bitcoinexchangeguide.com

The growing marketplace for AI ethics [Forbes Insights with Intel AI]

On 04/01/2019, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, corporate / business world, ethics, Europe, Google, ideas, law schools, leadership, legislatures / government / legal, Microsoft, morals/values, pace of change, platforms, society, trends, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

The growing marketplace for AI ethics — from forbes.com by Forbes Insights with Intel AI

Excerpt:

As companies have raced to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) systems at scale, they have also sped through, and sometimes spun out, in the ethical obstacle course AI often presents.

AI-powered loan and credit approval processes have been marred by unforeseen bias. Same with recruiting tools. Smart speakers have secretly turned on and recorded thousands of minutes of audio of their owners.

Unfortunately, there’s no industry-standard, best-practices handbook on AI ethics for companies to follow*—at least not yet. Some large companies, including Microsoft and Google, are developing their own internal ethical frameworks.

A number of think tanks, research organizations, and advocacy groups, meanwhile, have been developing a wide variety of ethical frameworks and guidelines for AI.

*Insert DSC:
Read this as a very powerful, chaotic, massive WILD, WILD, WEST. Can law schools, legislatures, governments, businesses, and more keep up with this new pace of technological change?

Also see:

AI Is Good (Perhaps Too Good) at Predicting Who Will Die Prematurely — from livescience.com by Mindy Weisberger
5 European companies that are (really) advancing AI — from thenextweb.com by Ben Dickson

Check out the numerous blogs on LawProfessorBlogs.com!

On 03/29/2019, in 24x7x365 access, blogs / blogging / vlogging, ideas, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, RSS, social learning / networks, society, staying relevant, streams of content, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
There are all kinds of topics/legal areas represented in this network. Check it out!

Map of fundamental technologies in legal services [Mahoney]

On 03/28/2019, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business, data related items, digital audio, digital video, emerging technologies, intelligent systems, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, pace of change, platforms, technology (general), tools, by Daniel Christian

Map of fundamental technologies in legal services — from remakinglawfirms.com by Michelle Mahoney

Excerpt:
The Map is designed to help make sense of the trends we are observing:

an increasing number of legal technology offerings;
the increasing effectiveness of legal technologies;
emerging new categories of legal technology;
the layering and combining of fundamental technology capabilities; and
the maturation of machine learning, natural language processing and deep learning artificial intelligence.

Given the exponential nature of the technologies, the Fundamental Technologies Map can only depict the landscape at the current point in time.

I nformation processing in legal services (PDF file)

Also see:
Delta Model Update: The Most Important Area of Lawyer Competency — Personal Effectiveness Skills — from legalexecutiveinstitute.comby Natalie Runyon

Excerpt:

Many legal experts say the legal industry is at an inflection point because the pace of change is being driven by many factors — technology, client demand, disaggregation of matter workflow, the rise of Millennials approaching mid-career status, and the faster pace of business in general.

The fact that technology spend by law firms continues to be a primary area of investment underscores the fact that the pace of change is continuing to accelerate with the ongoing rise of big data and workflow technology that are greatly influencing how lawyering gets done. Moreover, combined with big unstructured data, artificial intelligence (AI) is creating opportunities to analyze siloed data sets to gain insights in numerous new ways.

Learning Ecosystems

I hope this tech doesn’t make it…

Through the legal looking glass [LOD & Jordan Furlong]

Categories

Tags