Amid the dire - and somewhat overhyped - predictions of occupations that will be decimated by artificial intelligence and automation, there is one crumb of comfort. Yes, lorry drivers, translators and shop assistants are all under threat from the rise of the robots, but at least the lawyers are doomed too. That at least may be your conclusion when you hear about a fascinating contest that took place last month. It pitched over 100 lawyers from many of London's ritziest firms against an artificial intelligence program called Case Cruncher Alpha. Both the humans and the AI were given the basic facts of hundreds of PPI (payment protection insurance) mis-selling cases and asked to predict whether the Financial Ombudsman would allow a claim.