AI is about focus

We're always on the lookout for great articles about AI. That's especially true when posts help simplify the technology and makes it accessible to more people. It's not rocket science, it's just AI!

We just read this excellent piece by the Artificial Lawyer. Although the article was ostensibly about what happens when you mix venture capitalist money with a young legal Solution & Professional Services company (and the resulting fallout), it did make a great point that we wanted to amplify.

Many solutions companies talk about AI as a means to an end. There are breakthroughs all the time in:

• natural language processing (NLP) algorithms, helping AI understand people better
• new computer vision systems for detecting items or situations in live video feeds
• better predictive models based on data streams

But the solution is never the outcome. As the article states:

'Inefficiencies that take lawyers away from being lawyers are a central problem – and that really was the key problem that they (Atrium) wanted to solve.' Or, at least lawyers like Rakow wanted to solve. Perhaps the VC money was not so focused on this particular problem that lawyers faced.

And here is a small, but possible clue to the central problem. Rakow sees the tech as helping to make lawyers be lawyers again, i.e. be great professionals.

And there's the central idea that we have to remember.

AI can help make us better at what we do but doesn't take away the skill needed to do it (at least in many industries):

• Lawyers can be better lawyers through AI systems that help with document reviews, contracts or case law research
• Manufacturers can build a better product, supported by AI vision systems for quality, or trained ML models for logistics
• Software companies can create better products, through AI code reviews looking for complex bugs, or (dare I say it) auto-generated test cases via ML models

And a final quote from Rakow sums up a lot of the reasons why we help clients every day:

"As a lawyer, I've always loved this profession and wanted to free the wonderful parts of it from the painful parts, for both clients and practitioners alike."

Our clients work on complicated and challenging issues, but that's what makes them successful. If we can free them up to do what they do best, we all win.

Let us know your take on AI in the comments below.

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