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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This past Friday afternoon I read an article reporting that Fidel Castro had bid the Cuban people adios as he felt he would be dying soon. Early Saturday morning I found out the former lawyer/revolutionary fighter/prime minister and president had indeed passed away. Castro was a complex man who lead a complex life in complex times, and neither the damning attacks or the blushing praise that’s fomented in his wake really does justice to this true survivor, his revolutionary days, and his impact upon them. Estela Bravo’s documentary Fidel Castro: The Untold Story offers a worthy window on Cuba, the revolution, and the man at the middle of each for more than half a century. Here are some words from Bravo’s website…

To some he is a champion of the poor and the powerless; to others he is a ruthless dictator. He is often dismissed as a relic, yet many revere him as a saviour. He is Cuban President, Fidel Castro.

FIDEL covers forty years of the Cuban Revolution and provides a unique opportunity to consider the life of one of the most influential and controversial figures of our time.

Director, Estela Bravo, has obtained original and unusual interviews with Castro and exclusive footage from Cuban State archives. For the first time on film, we see Fidel Castro in a more intimate light, swimming with his bodyguards, visiting his childhood home and school, joking with his friend Nelson Mandela, meeting with Elian Gonzalez, and celebrating his birthday with the Buena Vista Social Club.

Bravo allows the story to unfold through the words of Alice Walker, Sydney Pollack, Ted Turner, Muhammed Ali, Harry Belafonte, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Congressman Charles Rangel, Ramsey Clark, Wayne Smith, and others. Family and close friends, such as the Nobel Prize winning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, also offer a window into the largely unknown private life of Fidel Castro.

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On December 18, 1912 antiquarian and lawyer Charles Dawson announced that he had discovered the skull of a “missing link” in the human fossil record. The thick skull and the large jaw satisfied many that Dawson’s discovery was indeed a specimen that demonstrated the connection between monkeys and men. It might have been one of the most important discoveries in the history of science. Instead, it was one of the most successful hoaxes of all time.

Here’s a documentary about Charles Dawson’s Piltdown Man…

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