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Ross: Attorney built on top of IBM's Watson

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

#101

Post by melchebo »

jameshart wrote: post #76
minthd wrote: post #56

Is 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.

Where is the Watson chef app? It's been writing a book: http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Cooking-Chef-Watson-Innovati... (disclosure: I work for IBM, not in the Watson group)

Chef website: http://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-news/art...

Request beta access: https://watson.ihost.com/watson/chefwatson/page/survey.html

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

#102

Post by digikata »

lurcio wrote: post #51

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..."

I'm optimistic that it's a good development, the more automation displaces high-salary occupations, the more likely society will change to address fundamental economic shifts associated with singularity, or post-scarcity, or whatever you want to label it. Doubly true since it's an frequent past occupation of politicians.

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

#103

Post by [deleted] »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #78
mikecb wrote: post #72

Love the idea and execution, but this is less an attorney and more a legal librarian. Attorneys spend most of their time on the facts of the case. In law school, most lawyers are taught to present each argument in a standard format called IRAC: Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion. The issue is like the question presented on the front page here: "can courts pierce the corporate veil where a corporation has misappropriat…

Right now, there are a lot of billable hours for what Ross can do in seconds. I don't think it's unfair to say that this is replacing a substantial portion of _some_ lawyer's jobs.

[deleted]

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

#104

Post by [deleted] »

jimbokun wrote: post #89
jakobegger wrote: post #40

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.

This seems similar to attempts to rewrite a complex code base to be simpler, more consistent, and easier to understand. In practice, a lot of the quirky, wonky code is there to fix an actual bug that was encountered, and taking it out re-introduces the bug. How do we know eliminating some of the complexities of current laws won't re-introduce some of the problems those complexities were trying to solve?

[deleted]

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

#105

Post by rayiner »

dragonwriter wrote: post #77
bshimmin wrote: post #44

Earlier 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.

> 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. Lawyers are often behind movements to simplify the law. The problem is that efforts to simplify the law often lead to (what some substantial group feels are) substantially negative impacts given the…

Law written by lawyers (e.g. Model Codes, Restatements, Procedural Rules) are usually far shorter and more clear than law written by legislatures. The political process introduces a lot of special cases and legislatures are hesitant to leave discretion to the judiciary. Both for obvious reasons.

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

#106

Post by minthd »

melchebo wrote: post #101
jameshart wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the Watson chef app? It's been writing a book: http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Cooking-Chef-Watson-Innovati... (disclosure: I work for IBM, not in the Watson group)

Chef website: http://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-news/art... Request beta access: https://watson.ihost.com/watson/chefwatson/page/survey.html

"fill up this survey, and you might win a change to test watson". Doesn't really inspire confidence. and maybe there's a good reason for that - like it's not ready for prime time, or for heavy testing by technologists ?

And that sound like what review says here[1]:

"it’s worth reiterating that, at this early stage, this software really does not stand on its own. That’s not to say it’s not useful (it is!) but it has a ways to go before it’s ready for prime time."

And since this is field nobody has tried to build apps for(because of limited commercial value),there's nothing to compare it to, which makes it harder to evaluate the tech.

[1]http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/let-ibms-chef-watson-create-tha...

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

#107

Post by rhino369 »

jakobegger wrote: post #40

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 more you simplify the law, the more complex the application of the law becomes.

Murder occurs when a person, of sound memory and discretion, unlawfully kills a person, with malice aforethought.

Seems simple the there are hundreds of cases that tell you what exactly the limits of these elements are. Is being drunk sound mind? What constitutes malice aforethought.

The law is complicated because reality is complicated.

The civil law system keeps it a bit less complicated by not using precedent from old cases. But that means the application in your case is harder to predict. It is your judge making the gut call instead of a history of judges.

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

#108

Post by akashizzle »

mikecb wrote: post #72

Love the idea and execution, but this is less an attorney and more a legal librarian. Attorneys spend most of their time on the facts of the case. In law school, most lawyers are taught to present each argument in a standard format called IRAC: Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion. The issue is like the question presented on the front page here: "can courts pierce the corporate veil where a corporation has misappropriat…

Great comment. What ROSS does in addition to what you've described is ask questions against the context of a case. The case facts (inputed by users) will be factored into the queries so as to produce the most relevant information (rules, precedents and other connections across a vast body law) that would take an associate (especially a junior) many hours to unlock. And absolutely, ROSS is not the end. The quality of the execution lies in a legal researcher working well with a cognitive system that provides around-the-clock legal intelligence. And e-discovery is definitely on the radar for the future.

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

#109

Post by rhino369 »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #10
sandworm wrote: post #8

This sort of device is only applicable for very specific areas of "law". It may work for generalized law questions, retrieval of known legal principals, or even for electronic discovery (data mining) but once you get beyond law school there is a human element. I would like to see a machine come up with a novel means of describing a realworld legal situation. Ask him to determine whether John Stewart's use of media fr…

Its not meant to replace humans. Its meant to reduce the amount of tedious research work they need to do. If you reduce the vast tedium of researching stuff in Westlaw/LexisNexis, you can spend more time on your research memo. You can do more actual analysis work. Thus firms can reduce the number of associates they need on staff, because the associates won't be wasting time on wrangling research results. Yes, you sti…

It probably won't even replace the vast tedium of researching West/Lexis for a while, but it might replace the "attorneys" that West/Lexis employ to summarize and tag articles w/ metadata. There is a ton of humanhours put into West/Lexis databases. They aren't just keyword searches.

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

#110

Post by mcmancini »

mikecb wrote: post #72

Love the idea and execution, but this is less an attorney and more a legal librarian. Attorneys spend most of their time on the facts of the case. In law school, most lawyers are taught to present each argument in a standard format called IRAC: Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion. The issue is like the question presented on the front page here: "can courts pierce the corporate veil where a corporation has misappropriat…

Interesting, IRAC sounds a lot like SOAP (subjective, objective, assessment, plan) notes used in medicine.
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