I wonder what this thing's LSAT score was...

Accounts Playable

http://futurism.com/artificially-intelligent-lawyer-ross-hired-first-official-law-firm/

Once Sky-net takes over, I'm just imagining poor Ross having nothing to do. In a post-apocalypse, a bankruptcy attorney AI would probably be useless.

J.Y. Ping

I was super impressed when Watson kicked ass on Jeopardy. I'd like to see it (or Ross) tackle the LSAT.

Alan Cheuk-2

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out with the Lexis and Westlaw legal databases.

If Ross can annotate and connect cases as well or better than their super expensive, human curated databases, this could totally disrupt Lexis and Westlaw's duopoly.

Or if Ross is hooked into both databases, it could have the best information of any legal databases - shepardized/headnoted cases from both Lexis and Westlaw, plus new dynamic connections made by Ross, all delivered in natural language.

Mookittyy

I like how they called it Ross... as in Mike Ross?

Jonathan Wang

Is it weird that the first thing that came to my mind was "hey, there's an RC passage about this"?

Which there is, by the way. Centered around the failures of previous iterations of this technology, obviously, but the subject matter is definitely there.

I don't know whether to be ashamed or proud.

Cant Get Right

I do that all the time @"Jonathan Wang" . I’m actually deliberately balancing my carb/protein intake now based on a passage from the other day. It may just be placebo, but I don’t seem to feel so crappy all the time now.

MrSamIam

@Mookittyy That's the first thought that crossed my mind.

Nicole Hopkins

@"Jonathan Wang" said:
I don't know whether to be ashamed or proud.

I think we need a neologism describing an emotion arising when one is impressed by the extent of one's own geekery.

Accounts Playable

A pretty interesting video on a related topic.

I'm a CPA, and all throughout undergrad many non-accounting professors would say that accountants will be a profession that will be obsolete in the near future due to automation, technology, and AIs. I always thought that was pretty absurd because there are tons of things accountants do that require critical thinking/professional skepticism that's hard to replicate: certain tax situations, mergers/acquisition structuring (which is highly variable on a case by case basis), implementing/designing systems, auditing/review, etc. Sure, basic bookkeeping will probably be automated, but that's a very narrow focus of accounting. In any case, widespread automation in these respects won't be anytime in the near future.

I suspect many of the same types arguments can be made for lawyers; certain mundane processes can be automated, but the vast majority of things that lawyers do can't be.

Edit: Added another video