Live data from Hacker News

Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson

poweredbyross.com

41–50 of 119 posts

Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson

#41
post #27

Couple of my friends that work for IBM told me that it still needs a lot of work because researchers that take blind tests can almost always tell apart the cold, inhuman responses that are devoid of any human decency from the responses generated by the computer.

[deleted]

Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson

#42
Why is this only offered to lawyers and legal professionals? I have had countless scenarios where I just want to look up something regarding the laws surrounding a topic but get lost looking for accurate legal information... This seems like a perfect solution for that use case, no?

Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson

#43

Does someone now where the stunning photo of a library was taken?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadtbibliothek_Stuttgart Another view of it: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblioteca_civica_di_Stoccarda#... - it looks positively Kubrickian.

Absolutely beautiful. I wasn't 100% sure it was even real!

Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson

#44

I'm impressed, and I'd love to see it in action. But I'm also worried that this is going in the wrong direction. If the law is getting too complex for humans to handle, the solution is not to create supercomputers that help us. The solution should be to simplify the law.

The law has always been complicated. I'm pretty sure the only people who would be able to "simplify the law" would be lawyers, and I can't really imagine they would think it would be in their best interests to do that.

Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson

#45
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to The Matrix, Neo.

The matrix was a movie about being connected to and living in a simulation without knowing it. The judges could very well be real peoples' consciousnesses. Not really a good comparison.

Damn you, Agent Smith!

Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson

#46
post #42

Why is this only offered to lawyers and legal professionals? I have had countless scenarios where I just want to look up something regarding the laws surrounding a topic but get lost looking for accurate legal information... This seems like a perfect solution for that use case, no?

One issue is that they'd have to be very careful to ensure they're not seen as providing legal advice.

Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson

#47
Does anyone know of in-depth articles that explain Watson internals (or even general such as what family of algorithms they're using) ?

A friend of mine got to visit their R&D department a few years ago, and told me they basically explained nothing at all and remained on the marketing level. But there's got to be something somewhere, like previous research articles by the team's members, right ?

Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson

#49
post #7

This is a good 80/20 solution. 80% of the value of the attorney for (less than) 20% of the effort/cost.

What people seem to misunderstand about steveeg1 comment is that a lot of time at an attorney office is spend sifting through old cases. Since lawyers bill in hours they either have to raise their hourly bill or lie about the hours spend in order to keep the final price tag the same.

As far as I know, litigators do spend a fair amount of time researching cases as it there job to assemble a case that is capable of being presented in court - although most litigation gets settled before going anywhere near a court.

However, in most law firms I know litigators are in the minority - and I don't think the likes of corporate lawyers spend much time researching cases?

Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson

#50

I'm impressed, and I'd love to see it in action. But I'm also worried that this is going in the wrong direction. If the law is getting too complex for humans to handle, the solution is not to create supercomputers that help us. The solution should be to simplify the law.

The law has always been complicated. I'm pretty sure the only people who would be able to "simplify the law" would be lawyers, and I can't really imagine they would think it would be in their best interests to do that.

Also, it's a reflection of reality and human values, both of which which happen to be very complex, nuanced, and have plenty of edge cases for any rule we might try to dream up.
Post reply on HN