13th February, 2020
A contest between artificial intelligence robots and US lawyers saw the bots beat the briefs hands down.
The English Sunday Times magazine (published in late 2019) reports that five experienced US lawyers went head-to-head against AI bots designed to read contracts.
The goal was to see who was better at picking out the loopholes.
The AI team found 94% of the gaps in the contract while the humans dug up 85%.
Warp speed
Crucially however, the AI delivered the work at lightning speed, completing the task in 26 seconds while the human lawyers took 92 minutes.
However, computer scientist Stuart Russell says that while AI may be programmed to do basic tasks, and complete them at warp speed, it can never replace human judgment and the ability to do strategic planning.