Wowed by the engineering brilliance.
Ambivalent about the social cost-benefit.
Creative destruction indeed (for the lower and middle orders, anyway).
"First it came for the factory workers,...and then the medics and lawyers..."
Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson
51–60 of 119 posts
Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think it's a reflection of an uneducated society that cannot apply common sense or the Golden Rule. Everything has to be specified in extreme detail.
Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's the codification that begets the complexity.
Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think it's a reflection of an uneducated society that cannot apply common sense or the Golden Rule. Everything has to be specified in extreme detail.
> it's a reflection of an uneducated society that cannot apply common sense
The problem of common sense is that everybody has his own, you can't build rules on sand and that's what "common sense" is.
For one person it's common sense to snip bits of genital organs from infants, for the next it's common sense to pray 5 times a day, for yet an other one it's common sense to flog your children to bleeding, outright own other human beings or threaten those who don't agree with you with maiming or death. You will find people telling you it's common sense to have live grenades on your coffee tables, plant anti-personnel mines in your garden, answer a door-knock by shooting through the door or walk around with enough weaponry to take over a small country.
Relying on "common sense" is relying on hyperlocal groupthink, it's not even workable in tribal societies, it's barely workable within a small family.
Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson
#55Why 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?
Watson's good, but it's not that advanced. It's an 'expert system', in that it's a system for experts, not a system that is an expert.
This is a smarter, domain-specific search engine. You still need to be able to ask the right questions and then understand interpret the results it provides.
I still don't disagree that for certain 'low-stakes' issues it could be a useful tool for lay persons, but they'd need to understand the limitations. Perhaps they're worried that giving such access might tarnish the Watson brand -- if a medical doctor has tried Ross and found it wanting then when they roll out 'House' she might dismiss it as junk based on that experience.
Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson
#56Is there an amazing demo of this tech that i missed ? because if not-this is just another marketing site for watson/ibm, nothing more. we've seen plenty of those done by IBM- without much result yet(for example, where is watson the chef app they promised), 4 years after jeopardy.
So i think it's better to be skeptical.
Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson
#57I'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.
If the answers are comprehensive and accurate, this could aid the simplification of law by revealing conflicts and inconsistencies.
Reforming law to be machine readable might eventually provide a litmus test to prevent the passage of bad laws. It could also provide a way to flag prior law that is invalidated by a new law.
Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think it's a reflection of an uneducated society that cannot apply common sense or the Golden Rule. Everything has to be specified in extreme detail.
The satirical version of the Golden Rule that "Whoever has the gold, makes the rules." seems appropriate in this context!
Re: Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson
#59I'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.
Things like case law become more complicated due to the march of time. More cases get decided, more case law is created. Another is the question of legislative intent. The edits to law as it is being drafted can be used to argue a case. These edits increase with time.