Top UK law firms are ahead of their US counterparts in the use of artificial intelligence (AI), an index of legal service delivery innovation has suggested. The Legal Services Innovation Index, based on internet searches of law firm websites for indications of innovation, was devised by the College of Law at Michigan State University in the US. Academics searched the websites of firms from the Am Law 200, Global 100, and the Canadian top 30, in August 2017. They looked for mentions of innovations in 10 categories, including data analytics, AI (including'machine learning'), blockchain (including'smart contracts'), and alternative fee arrangements. In the results, by jurisdiction UK law firm websites returned 2,068 page'hits' in total for the 10 search terms, compared to 672 for the US firms and 666 for Chinese firms.

Voters have a right to keep their political beliefs private. But according to some researchers, it won't be long before a computer program can accurately guess whether people are liberal or conservative in an instant. All that will be needed are photos of their faces. Michal Kosinski – the Stanford University professor who went viral last week for research suggesting that artificial intelligence (AI) can detect whether people are gay or straight based on photos – said sexual orientation was just one of many characteristics that algorithms would be able to predict through facial recognition. Using photos, AI will be able to identify people's political views, whether they have high IQs, whether they are predisposed to criminal behavior, whether they have specific personality traits and many other private, personal details that could carry huge social consequences, he said.

Equifax's security failure affected 143 million US consumers, or 44 percent of the US population. To add insult to injury, Equifax waited over a month before revealing the security breach it had suffered. If you're one of the millions affected by the breach, a chatbot can now help you sue Equifax in small claims court, potentially letting you avoid hiring a lawyer for advice. Even if you want to be part of the class action lawsuit against Equifax, you can still sue Equifax for negligence in small claims court using the DoNotPay bot and demand maximum damages. Maximum damages range between $2,500 in states like Rhode Island and Kentucky to $25,000 in Tennessee.

Today, Financial Institutions (FIs) face significant legal and reputational risks when it comes to complying with anti-money laundering (AML) requirements (including anti-terrorist financing and obligations to conform). Failure can lead to serious sanctions imposed by regulatory bodies (Recently, Societe Generale fined $5.83 MM for a number of shortcomings in its control for preventing money laundering). Today's financial markets are truly global. Transactions and flow of funds take place through a web of interactions across nations and systems. This makes it difficult to be compliant with thousands of regulations and norms across a large number of jurisdictions.

Google is appealing against the record €2.4bn (£2.2bn) fine imposed by the European Union for its abuse of its dominance of the search engine market in building its shopping comparison service. The world's most popular internet search engine has launched its appeal after it was fined by the European commission for what was described as an "old school" form of illegality. The Luxembourg-based general court, Europe's second-highest, is expected to take several years before ruling on Google's appeal, which had been widely expected. The Silicon Valley giant had responded to the fine at the time of its announcement by saying that it "respectfully" disagreed with the legal argument being pursued. A spokesman for the commission said: "The commission will defend its decision in court."

In the near future, your pizza, Big Mac, and groceries could all be delivered autonomously. But, the good Cali folk out there expecting their newly legalized batches of pot to arrive in the same manner, are in for a bummer. The California Bureau of Cannabis Control recently declared that weed deliveries cannot be made by autonomous vehicles -- that includes UAVs and unmanned self-driving cars. Therefore, don't go expecting the robot delivering your munchies to bring you Scooby Snacks too. "Transportation may not be done by aircraft, watercraft, rail, drones, human-powered vehicles, or unmanned vehicles," according to the bureau's business licensing regulations.

With the July 2017 publication of its MiFID II Policy Statement, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has signaled the final countdown to the most sweeping changes of governance, protection and transparency for a generation. While MiFID II will fundamentally change the business models of many firms, especially those in the advisory sector, there are also significant new technology requirements that apply to all firms and which are causing some to have sleepless nights. One of these new technology decrees is a mandate to record telephone calls for anyone either directly involved in trading or giving advice that may lead up to a trade. The intent behind this is noble, which is to provide transparency against firms or individuals giving bad advice. However, the new regulations don't end simply with the need to record these calls, but go further to require that firms actively monitor their calls to identify mis-selling or other bad practices.

"From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein's Monster to the classical myth of Pygmalion, through the story of Prague's Golem to the robot of Karel Čapek, who coined the word, people have fantasised about the possibility of building intelligent machines, more often than not androids with human features". This is not an excerpt from a book on the history of robots in literature, but the opening sentence of the brand new European Parliament report on Robotics. Beyond this anecdotal reference, this draft report attempts to answer a question: as the presence of robots in our societies is no longer a science-fiction fantasy, and with people interacting more and more with intelligent machines in their day-to-day lives, is the future of humanity threatened? While the European Commission does currently fund robotics projects, the EU lacks a common regulatory framework in this field. Against this backdrop, the legal affairs committee of the European Parliament, has been entrusted with the task of writing a report on the issue of robotics, and has elaborated policy recommendations for the European Commission.

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Key Points: – Businesses often overlook important issues related to morals and ethics of chatbots and AI. You can also listen to The Modern Customer Podcast with Rob High here.) Businesses are rapidly waking up to the need for bots. From automating basic communications and customer service, to reducing costs and providing a platform for conversational commerce, bots offer many new opportunities to delight and better serve customers. Chatbots can offer 24/7 customer service, rapidly engaging millennials, answering their queries as whenever they arrive.