Legal Artificial Intelligence has made the news' headlines often, recently. There are chat bots, e.g., that help you appeal against a parking ticket (www.donotpay.co.uk), or give you a first advice if you are considering a divorce (divorce bot). There is software that predicts the likely outcome of court cases. IBM offers legal AI services for eDiscovery and legal research with its Watson supercomputer: Ross, as the service is called, uses Natural Language Processing, and can also be used for cognitive computing, e.g., to review contracts (www.rossintelligence.com). Then there is RPA (Robotics Process Automation) who are creating software robots for law firms.

One Friday afternoon, I decided to check out a pea-sized lump on my neck that was causing me consternation. I started by calling my GP's surgery in south London. A recorded message informed me there were no appointments that day; after a few minutes, a receptionist came on the line and said that I could have an appointment on Monday. Not too bad, I thought, until I realised she was not talking about the Monday three days hence, but the one 10 days away. I could also try for a walk-in slot or a phone consultation from 8am to 10am on weekday mornings. The homepage was purple and teal, the writing welcomingly blobby.

I met up with founder Ali Parsa at the recent unveiling of a new AI based triage service that aims to make it easier and more effective for patients to take those first steps towards good health. The service was tested both live against experienced doctors and nurses on the day and over a more prolonged period and featured strongly on both occasions. Indeed, the AI system was found to be both more accurate and considerably faster (and therefore cheaper) than human based triage services.