Today I stumbled upon this BBC tech story about the latest advances in replacing lawyers using AI…

Amid the dire – and somewhat overhyped – predictions of occupations that will be decimated by artificial intelligence and automation, there is one crumb of comfort. Yes, lorry drivers, translators and shop assistants are all under threat from the rise of the robots, but at least the lawyers are doomed too. (Some of my best friends are lawyers, honest.)

That at least may be your conclusion when you hear about a fascinating contest that took place last month. It pitched over 100 lawyers from many of London’s ritziest firms against an artificial intelligence program called Case Cruncher Alpha.
Both the humans and the AI were given the basic facts of hundreds of PPI (payment protection insurance) mis-selling cases and asked to predict whether the Financial Ombudsman would allow a claim.

In all, they submitted 775 predictions and the computer won hands down, with Case Cruncher getting an accuracy rate of 86.6%, compared with 66.3% for the lawyers.

Read the full story through the link. Did anybody else think of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! Season 4, Episode 9, “Brothers Cinco?” This episode features the brothers behind the ACME company of the T&E universe: a new product launch gets snagged on a murder accusation and the Cinco Brothers are challenged by their own legally-binding courtroom software…

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