As technology continues to permeate society more and more, companies are exploring how advancements in tech can improve the legal profession. Many of these institutions are researching ways to make the legal system more efficient for all stakeholders through information technology. Where can lawyers who are interested in this growth industry learn about the progress being made from thought leaders in the field? In this episode of Law Technology Now, host Monica Bay speaks with Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology Executive Director Roland Vogl about the upcoming 2016 CodeX FutureLaw Conference. Roland reflects on his time as a student in The Stanford Program in International Legal Studies (SPILS) and how that path led him to work as an intellectual property lawyer and ultimately a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School.

On the Internet, "nobody knows you're a dog," as the old meme goes, and today, the same can increasingly be said of robots. There are already scheduling robots that are virtually indistinguishable from humans, and recently students at the Georgia Institute of Technology learned that "Jill Watson" -- a teaching assistant they had relied upon all semester -- was in fact artificially intelligent. "The world is full of online classes, and they're plagued with low retention rates," said Ashok Goel, a Georgia Tech professor who teaches a class entitled Knowledge-Based Artificial Intelligence. "One of the main reasons many students drop out is because they don't receive enough teaching support. We created Jill as a way to provide faster answers and feedback."

We are continuing to announce the speakers for Data Day Seattle 2016. We have 20 more speakers yet to announce. Check back regularly for updates. If you wish to speak at Data Day Seattle, there is still time to submit a proposal. John Akred is the Founder and CTO of Silicon Valley Data Science. In the business world, John Akred likes to help organizations become more data driven. He has over 15 years of experience in machine learning, predictive modeling, and analytical system architecture. His focus is on the intersection of data science tools and techniques; data transport, processing and storage technologies; and the data management strategy and practices that can unlock data driven capabilities for an organization. A frequent speaker at the O'Reilly Strata Conferences, John is host of the perennially popular workshop: Building A Data Platform.

Students taking an online course at Georgia Tech's School of Interactive Computing were duped into thinking one of their teaching assistants, named Jill Watson, was an actual human. And how can you blame them--the virtual TA managed to answer many of their questions with 97 percent certainty. Now, being "certain" is not the same as being correct. But computer science professor Ashok Goel felt it was a sufficient level of confidence to allow the virtual TA, named Jill Watson, to answer student inquiries on her own. For nearly the entire month of April, Jill was responding directly to the class through an online student forum, but only when she was 97 percent sure her answers were correct. The students weren't told that they were interacting with a virtual TA until April 26.

In the latest sign that the use of artificial intelligence may eventually become common in Big Law, Baker & Hostetler has emerged as the first law firm to make public that it has licensed the artificial intelligence product developed by ROSS Intelligence for bankruptcy matters. Marketed as "the world's first artificially intelligent attorney," ROSS Intelligence uses International Business Machine's Watson technology to allow users to ask natural language questions and get answers. The process not only constantly monitors the law, but more importantly uses "machine learning" capabilities to continuously improve its search results. ROSS Intelligence CEO and co-founder Andrew Arruda said that a few other firms have also signed licenses, and those announcements will come shortly. Arruda first mentioned that Baker & Hostetler had signed on as a client at Vanderbilt Law School's Watson, Esq.

Schools should put a greater emphasis on teaching digital technology - as millions of jobs could be swept away by automation, says former education secretary Lord Kenneth Baker. Now chair of the Edge Foundation, Mr Baker says young people must be taught the skills for jobs of the future. He warned that many white collar and professional jobs will be under threat from artificial intelligence. "Jobs are being lost in professions we used to regard as careers for life." Lord Baker has produced a report, the Digital Revolution, calling for the education system to respond to the way in which technological change will affect the future jobs market.

"I don't just want them to catch up," she says of her students. "I want them to see mathematics as relevant and beautiful. I want them to be able to imagine a (successful) life for themselves." At 35, Nickels has earned a doctoral degree in mathematics education and is usingrobotics to help kids with cancer, sickle-cell disease and HIV-AIDS. She wants to both develop their intellect under the most challenging of circumstances – including, often, in the hospital between surgery and chemotherapy – and to give them back a sense of control over their destinies.

Moon caves could provide shelter for astronauts exploring Earth's nearest neighbor, researchers say. A new analysis of data gathered by NASA's twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft, which mapped the moon's gravitational field in unprecedented detail, turned up a number of new candidates for lava tubes -- cave-like structures that could be large enough to house supplies and astronauts. Space is a harsh environment. Radiation from the sun, galactic cosmic rays and constantly falling micrometeorites all present a threat to human explorers. "A lava tube provides a safe haven from all these hazardous environmental conditions," study team member Rohan Sood, a graduate student at Purdue University in Indiana, told Space.com.

When Pham Quang Hung started studying Japanese at Foreign Trade University in Hanoi in 1994, he never imagined that Vietnamese children would one day be able to learn the language in elementary school. Now the first secretary for educational affairs at the Vietnamese Embassy in Tokyo can hardly wait to see the launch in September of a pilot project to offer Japanese lessons at three elementary schools in Hanoi. It will be the first time that Japanese language education has been offered at the publicly run primary school level in Southeast Asia, according to Japanese officials. The project follows the development of a Japanese program that the Vietnamese government introduced for middle and high school students in 2003. At present, English and French are the only foreign languages Vietnamese students can learn in elementary school.

Data science and machine learning have long been interests of mine, but now that I'm working on Fuzzy.io I need to keep on top of all the news in both fields. My preferred way to do this is through listening to podcasts. I've listened to a bunch of machine learning and data science podcasts in the last few months, so I thought I'd share my favorites: Every other week, they release a 10–15 minute episode where hosts, Kyle and Linda Polich give a short primer on topics like k-means clustering, natural language processing and decision tree learning, often using analogies related to their pet parrot, Yoshi. This is the only place where you'll learn about k-means clustering via placement of parrot droppings.