Like them, loathe them, fear them, but robots are bedding down in the legal profession. The number of patents filed globally with the World Intellectual Property Organisation for "lawtech" leapt by 34 per cent last year to a record high of 1,369, figures from a report published this week reveal. The figures also show that the number of patents filed has increased by nearly 65 per cent over the past two years, up from 831 in 2017. According to researchers at Thomson Reuters, which has exclusively shown the results with The Times, the increase in global patents filed "demonstrates how quickly the legal profession has turned to technology to revolutionise how it operates".

In early 2018, officials at University College London were shocked to learn that meetings organized by "race scientists" and neo-Nazis, called the London Conference on Intelligence, had been held at the college the previous four years. The existence of the conference was surprising, but the choice of location was not. UCL was an epicenter of the early 20th-century eugenics movement--a precursor to Nazi "racial hygiene" programs--due to its ties to Francis Galton, the father of eugenics, and his intellectual descendants and fellow eugenicists Karl Pearson and Ronald Fisher. In response to protests over the conference, UCL announced this June that it had stripped Galton's and Pearson's names from its buildings and classrooms. After similar outcries about eugenics, the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies renamed its annual Fisher Lecture, and the Society for the Study of Evolution did the same for its Fisher Prize. In science, these are the equivalents of toppling a Confederate statue and hurling it into the sea. Unlike tearing down monuments to white supremacy in the American South, purging statistics of the ghosts of its eugenicist past is not a straightforward proposition. In this version, it's as if Stonewall Jackson developed quantum physics. What we now understand as statistics comes largely from the work of Galton, Pearson, and Fisher, whose names appear in bread-and-butter terms like "Pearson correlation coefficient" and "Fisher information." In particular, the beleaguered concept of "statistical significance," for decades the measure of whether empirical research is publication-worthy, can be traced directly to the trio. Ideally, statisticians would like to divorce these tools from the lives and times of the people who created them. It would be convenient if statistics existed outside of history, but that's not the case.

The entire world is going cashless and banking activities and services seem to have moved online. Most customers perform their banking activities by adopting online services. Conversational AI is playing a significant role in attending to bank-related tasks and enabling the smooth functioning of the banks despite Covid constraints. Chatbot acts as a friendly banking assistant and enhances the overall financial services regime. Conversational AI in the financial sector usually deals with confidential user data including credit/ debit cards, bank accounts, sensitive personally identified information, and social security numbers.

A new law enforcement team could soon be created in Santa Clara County to help identify and remove firearms from gangsters, felons, or those who are the subject of domestic violence restraining orders.

In October 2020 the US House Antitrust Subcommittee, chaired by Congressman David Cicilline, published its report on competition in digital markets. It conducted a full review of the market from top to bottom, focusing on the dominance of the giants in the industry: Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google. The report zeroes in on their business practices, and how these could potentially amount to monopolies. They found that each platform had become, in one way or another, in direct and singular control of channels of mass distribution. They are no longer disruptive and innovative start-ups, but now resemble business monoliths akin to the oil barons and railroad tycoons of the past, controlling their respective industries, absorbing or removing competitors with ease.

The Department of Justice recently sued Google for allegedly monopolizing the market for search engines. The Department's complaint alleges that Google took numerous actions well before 2010 that formed part of the claimed antitrust violations. I have no comment about the merits. What I do want to call attention to, however, are the dates: a lawsuit beginning in 2020 to try to correct the market consequences of actions that began more than 10 years ago. The revolution that some scholars call "regulating by robot" is already underway.

We can safely defer the discussion about whether artificial intelligence will eventually take over board functions. We cannot, however, defer the discussion about how boards will oversee AI -- a discussion that's relevant whether organizations are developing AI systems or buying AI-powered software. With the technology in increasingly widespread use, it's time for every board to develop a proactive approach for overseeing how AI operates within the context of an organization's overall mission and risk management. According to McKinsey's 2019 global AI survey, although AI adoption is increasing rapidly, overseeing and mitigating its risks remain unresolved and urgent tasks: Just 41% of respondents said that their organizations "comprehensively identify and prioritize" the risks associated with AI deployment. Get monthly email updates on how artificial intelligence and big data are affecting the development and execution of strategy in organizations. Board members recognize that this task is on their agendas: According to the 2019 National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Blue Ribbon Commission report, Fit for the Future: An Urgent Imperative for Board Leadership, 86% of board members "fully expect to deepen their engagement with management on new drivers of growth and risk in the next five years."1

Industry leaders expand relationship providing access to Reveal's AI technology to Epiq clients globally Reveal, a groundbreaking eDiscovery technology company, and Epiq, a global leader in the legal services industry, today announced a global enterprise license agreement for the use of Reveal's artificial intelligence technology. The new enterprise license provides all Epiq clients with expanded access to Reveal's artificial intelligence platform with Reveal's recently announced acquisition of NexLP, a leader in the legal artificial intelligence space. Reveal's artificial intelligence platform turns disparate, unstructured data into meaningful insights that can be used to deliver operational efficiencies and strategic advantages for use with eDiscovery cases and Investigations. "Epiq is excited to partner with Reveal as it expands its analytics and artificial intelligence offering through the acquisition of NexLP, a long standing and highly strategic partner of Epiq," said Doug Mazlish, SVP, strategic alliances. "We are looking forward to continuing to provide our clients best in class legal technology solutions in partnership with Reveal. Reveal's investment in NexLP will further fuel their innovation in artificial intelligence in the legal industry and allow Epiq to continue to be an innovation leader in the market."

Lively, Inc., creators of the modern Health Savings Account (HSA), today released its first HSA Persona Report, giving a view into how consumers are using their HSA funds. Findings show that the industry's perception of the average HSA holder is vastly misunderstood, as a majority of people who use HSAs have just $1,050 in assets and are primarily motivated to save in case of unexpected healthcare costs. This indicates that account holders do not utilize an HSA for its long-term benefits and may need more offerings and education to start saving. This press release features multimedia. "HSAs are an incredible option because of their triple tax advantage: You put money in tax-free, earn interest or potential investment growth tax-free, and can withdraw money tax-free for qualified medical expenses," said Alex Cryricac, CEO and Co-Founder of Lively.

OneZero is partnering with the Big Technology Podcast from Alex Kantrowitz to bring readers exclusive access to interview transcripts with notable figures in and around the tech industry. This week, Kantrowitz sits down with Meredith Whittaker, an A.I. researcher who helped lead Google's employee walkout in 2018. This interview, which took place at World Summit A.I, has been edited for length and clarity. To subscribe to the podcast and hear the interview for yourself, you can check it out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Overcast. When I interviewed Tristan Harris about The Social Dilemma earlier this month, my mentions filled with people saying, "You should speak to the people who were critical of the social web long before the film." One name stood out: Meredith Whittaker. An A.I. researcher and former Big Tech employee, Whittaker helped lead Google's walkout in 2018 amid a season of activism inside the company. On this edition of the Big Technology Podcast, we spoke not only about her views on the film, but also of the future of workplace activism inside tech companies in a moment where some are questioning if it belongs at all. Alex Kantrowitz: It seems like your perspective on The Social Dilemma is a little bit different from Tristan's.