Category Archives: Ai

At one time or another, most lawyers involved in eDiscovery have felt the unique pressure induced by a slow-moving document review. That pressure to speed a review is one of the reasons that eDiscovery is effectively ground zero for todays exploding use of AI in law.

Many lawyers first encounter with machine-learning technology was through technology-assisted review (TAR) or predictive coding. Those technologies marked the first significant use of AI in any field of law, and that use is expanding.

So How Does TAR Lighten the Load?

Consider this scenario: Youre halfway through a document review and running out of time. Would it help to switch over to TAR?

Answer: Depending on the size of the collection, yes. In fact, because youve already coded half the documents, you can use those coding decisions to jumpstart the TAR process.

A law firm recently faced virtually the identical scenario. The firm had to review a relatively small collection of about 40,800 documents in a short time. As it waited for approval from its client to use TAR, the firm dove into the review, knowing time was tight. By the time the client gave the green light to use TAR, the firm had coded 18,200 of the 40,800 documents.

The documents theyd coded provided a ready-made set of seeds to use to train the TAR algorithm. This is possible with a TAR engine that uses continuous active learning, a machine learning protocol that enables it to use any and all previously coded documents as judgmental seeds to start the process.

The coded documents were fed into the system and then, based on that input, the entire population was analyzed and ranked. From that point, the TAR engine started feeding the reviewers batches of 50 documents each. Each batch contained the next-best documents that were most likely to be responsive. In each batch, the tool also included a few contextually diverse documents to make sure there are no topics or concepts left unexplored.

As the reviewers completed their batches, the system continuously used their judgments to re-rank the entire population, improving its rankings with each new batch. The review proceeded along this track until the reviewers started seeing batches with few, if any, relevant documents, which told them that few relevant documents remained. Testing showed that the review had achieved high recall, meaning the reviewers had found the vast majority of the relevant documents.

In the end, the law firm had reviewed another 6,800 documents beyond the 18,000 theyd reviewed before starting TAR. That meant there were another 15,800 documents they did not have to review. So, from the time they started using TAR, the process cut out 70% of the work that manual review would have required. The firm calculated that this saved its clients more than $70,000.

This scenario of how TAR works focuses on just one of 20 questions answered in a new book, Ask Catalyst: A Users Guide to TAR, which is available for free download at this link.

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How AI And Machine-Learning Tools Lighten The eDiscovery Load - Above the Law

So, in partnership with Linkedin, Monster, CareerBuilder, Glassdoor, and -- surprisingly -- Facebook, the tech giant will be launching Google for Jobs, an AI-powered search engine that combines Google search, machine learning (to delve into career sites), job boards, staffing agencies and applicant tracking systems to help you find work in your area. You can even set an alert for your search. That means, if the barista position you're looking for isn't available today, Google will notify you when it surfaces.

That's outstanding if you're one the 4.4 percent of the population that's unemployed. It was also good to see Google CEO Sundar Pichai demo job search with retail jobs instead of developer jobs. There are plenty of ways for a computer science major to find a gig. Finding a spot as a cashier in a store can be a bit trickier because of inconsistent job titles and some companies sticking to the same job posting plan year after year, even though better solutions are out there. Google takes all the information from various sources, throws its AI at it, and spits out an easy to read list that's beneficial to everyone involved.

This announcement is also is a timely reminder of the importance of smartphones for those struggling to make a living. The ubiquitous device has become an important tool for finding work, as for many it's their primary means of getting online. With Google's announcement, that task is now just a bit easier.

Google's AI initiative will power some pretty cool technology like Google Lens and Assistant, but it's good to know the company is also making sure that artificial intelligence is helping folks that need a paycheck more than they need to know what kind of flower they're looking at.

For all the latest news and updates from Google I/O 2017, follow along here.

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AI-powered Google for Jobs has work for everybody - Engadget

A year ago, Google CEO Sundar Pichai laid out a vision for an AI first future at Google, where the concept of computing is focused less on devices, with the computer taking the form of an omnipresent intelligent assistant.

At this years annual Google I/O developers conference, which kicks off tomorrow in Mountain View, Calif., were hoping to get a clearer understanding of what Pichai meant. (The keynote starts Wednesday, May 17 at 10 am PT, 1 pm ET.)

Weve seen the concept of AI-first computing fleshed out a bit with Googles Assistant software that runs on the Google Home device and later versions of Android. But for the most part, the idea of AI first remains abstract.

Ideally, well come out of I/O with a better big-picture understanding of what this new direction for Google means. At the very least, well come back with a smattering of new details that point in the direction of where Google is headed.

Dont expect new hardware devices, as Google tends to save those announcements for its fall hardware event. (There are exceptions: Google did announce the Home device at last years I/O.) But we dont think there will be a Home with a screen popping up, for example, to compete with Amazons new Echo Show.

Heres what were expecting:

Google, Google, everywhere. Expect Google to announce that its pushing Assistant to more hardware. Bloomberg reported that Google will unveil integrations with the iPhone and GE home devices including dishwashers, ovens, washers and dryers. That means users will be able to talk to their appliances, telling the oven to preheat or asking if the laundry is done, for example.

More Home features. The Information reported last month that Google planned to add Wi-Fi capabilities to Home so that the device can be used to extend a households Wi-Fi network. This may be an announcement at I/O.

Tensorflow. For software developers, Google may have news pertaining to its open-source machine learning framework Tensorflow, which Google uses for AI capabilities like recognizing objects and people in photos and understanding language. This could include announcing that Tensorflow will be supported by more platforms, which would mean developers could have more flexibility in the devices on which they run programs they build with Tensorflow.

More AI smarts in more places. In general, expect Google to announce that it is expanding its application of AI technology in more places, and that Google products are getting more automated. The whole point of AI is that its supposed to do most of the work.

VR and AR. We may learn that more phone manufacturers are releasing or updating phones with features compatible with Googles Daydream virtual reality platform. What would also be interesting is to find out whether Google plans to release more open-source VR or AR software. Google has already made its VR art software Tilt Brush open-source.

Android O. Earlier this year, Google released a developer preview of Android O, the latest version of the Android operating system under development. We already know a little bit about O, which doesnt yet have a full name: Its being designed for improved battery life and is expected to have simplified app-notification settings, for example. We may learn more about it at I/O.

Enterprise. Pichai wrote in his founders letter last year that enterprise cloud computing and workplace software and tools is a prime place to see AI advances take hold. Automated features figured prominently in announcements earlier this year at Googles cloud conference, Next. Some announcements could be focused on workplace productivity or cloud computing.

Wild card. All of these predictions and hunches are pretty straightforward. But Google tends to have something more exciting at I/O than mere iteration of what we already know the company is doing. So, whats the wild card here? One guess is that Google could announce a new operating system. Ars Technica published photos of a reported open-source smartphone OS from Google, supposedly called Fuchsia.

Join Recode for live coverage of I/O beginning Wednesday, May 17 at 10 am PT, 1 pm ET.

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Google I/O 2017: Expect a clearer understanding of Google's 'AI first' future - Recode

Resistance is futile.

The AI club just got bigger.

The Partnership on AI, a nonprofit group researching the uses of artificial intelligence, said Tuesday it's welcoming 22 new members. Eight of the new members are for-profit companies, including Intel, eBay, Sony and Salesforce. Nonprofits, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and UNICEF, make up the balance.

The new partners expand a group that already counts heavyweights in computing as members. Microsoft, Google and IBM are long-standing participants in the group. ("Long standing" is relative; the partnership was announced in September.) Even secretive Apple decided to be part of the club.

The growth of the PAI comes as the group takes on new initiatives.

PAI said it will create working groups to research and define best practices for specific topics and sectors within the field. It's also creating a fellowship to assist nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations looking to participate in AI issues.

PAI is also establishing an award for best paper on the topic of "AI, People, and Society" and a series of AI Grand Challenges.

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AI group gets bigger as Sony, Intel, eBay and others join - CNET - CNET

Forbes

How AI Pioneers Will Affect The Car Industry, And Why It's A Good Thing Forbes Vehicles have becoming increasingly more sophisticated under those plush seats and high-performance engine. Onboard technology has turned them into computers on wheels. New platforms like telematics where fleet vehicles can get information about ...

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How AI Pioneers Will Affect The Car Industry, And Why It's A Good Thing - Forbes

AIis one of the buzzwords of the moment in the world of tech, with startups coming at the concept from all angles computer vision, machine learning, unstructured data inference and natural language processing being just a handful in a wider effort to create more intelligentmachines. Now comes a new organization that hopes to find and foster the next wave of AI businesses and products, co-founded by the ex-CEO of Evernote, Phil Libin (pictured above), who has left his role as a managing director at General Catalyst to build it (but he tells me hell stay on as an advisor).

All Turtles, as the new company is called, is not your traditional startup incubator. In an interview with TechCrunch earlier, Libin (whose other co-founders are Jessica Collier (Product Design) and Jon Cifuentes (Research and Operations)describedit as startup studio, more akin to Netflixs push to develop original content than to 500 Startups.It will start out with locationsin San Francisco, Tokyo and Paris.

The idea with All Turtles is not necessarily to seek out fully formed businesses, but to find and develop interesting concepts en route to them possibly becoming businesses (or at least goodideas that other businesses might like to buy), with people and startups collaborating together to collectively grow. (This is also where the All Turtles name comes from: an apocryphal story about how the world is formed on the back of others work, that its a group effort in the end.)

This is not Libins first attempt to foster a group of AI startups: last year, after he parted ways with Evernote, Libin joined General Catalyst and kicked off a new project there to find, fund and grow startups building bots tools that chatted with you, ahuman, using conversational artificial intelligence, to help you find information, solve a problem, order a sofa, and much more.

In case you are wondering (I was), Libin said that his departure from General Catalyst and subsequent move to develop the idea further in a separate studiowas his decision a way to dive deeper into the development angle beyond the primary financial one of VCs.

Phils an incredible product guy and were excited to back him at All Turtles where he can focus on bringing awesome AI-driven products to market, a spokesperson from General Catalyst told TechCrunch in an email. Phil will continue on with General Catalyst as a senior advisor and will continue to work with many of the young bot companies he funded as an investor here.

There will also remain several strands connecting Libin, the startups and GC.

For starters, several startups that Libin backed as part of that bot effort at General Catalyst are now joining All Turtles as foundation members.

The list of foundation membersincludeButter, a teams assistant bot that works in Slack that helps you find information across multiple files as you need it;Growbot, a recognition bot to commemorate achievements and milestones at work;Edwin, aFacebook Messenger bot that tutors you in English vocabulary; Replika, an AI friend that acts as a companion and journal; robot lawyerDoNotPay; Loic Le Meurs talent finderLeade.rs; social selling botOctane AI; and home security and drone startupSunflower Labs. There will be more coming on that will be announced soon, Libin told me.

On top of that list, General Catalyst, along with Japans Digital Garage, are coming on as backers of All Turtles. Libin declined to disclose the amountthey are investing, or any numbers: more backers are going to be revealed later in the year, when All Turtles will also disclose more details as well.

Libin saidthat as part of staying on as an advisor at General Catalyst, hell also continue to be involved in the investments that he led for the company.

I had a conversation with Libin about what led to him starting All Turtles, what he hopes to achieve, and what he thinks about AI today. An edited version of it is below:

Why exactlydid you decide to leave General Catalyst? You were already running a seed fund forbots, so didnt you just develop this within that existing structure?

Id been thinking about this for a while, for years really. Its the job I thought I would have when I joined General Catalyst. I want to expand what entrepreneurship is. Toptier VCs are not the best place to do that, being adjacent to VC is best. I think this hasworked out great. Many of the portfolio and studio companies arethe ones I invested in General Catalyst, so its a natural progression.

It was my decision to do this and they supported me as primary backers of thecompany. I just realised that its more than investing. Just investing is not really enough to change how the industry works. I wanted to create a hands-on, more hybrid model.

You started with an effort to seek out bots. Now this has moved to AI but you are still primarily listing bots in All Turtles initial list. What is the roadmap here?

The first theme for us is practical AI bots,and conversational AI is a starting point. But I think this will moves quickly. Sunflower for example ismaking AI-based sensors and drones for security. So there is also a hardware component there. There are alsoa couple of others that havent been announced yet that we will be backing.

Do you feel like AI has become too hackneyed?

AI is a buzzword similar to what mobile feltlike to me when we started Evernote. Today, everyone is still talking about AI in a way that is similar to how people used to talk about mobile. Years ago, it wasstill possible to seek out and invest in companies building mobile apps. Now mobile is a part of everything and every company develops a mobile version.

I think something similar is happeningwith AI. Itmeans a specific set of algorithms and technology, but within three to five years it wont be AI companies anymore. It will fundamentally be baked into everything.

And thats what this is about for us: we want to catch something before it goes mainstream.

You are opening from the start in three geographies, San Francisco, Tokyo and Paris. A lot of VCs in Silicon Valley tend to like to invest more locally.Whats the story there?

I wantedto do this internationallyfrom the beginning. I missbeing in other parts of the world and talking to entrepreneurs there. We wanted to be in more than just San Francisco, andit was important to get great investors in Japan and Europe and Asia to go into all those areas.

Do you see other studio models a la Betaworks or Science or Expa as your models for this?

We are tryingto learn as many lessons from the likes of them as we can but I thinkwhat were doing is pretty different. Were modelling ourselves after Netflixrather than startupincubators. But rather than makingthe worlds best original TV shows, we want to makethe best AIproducts. We want to attractthe best people toproduce these in a professional setting and help them with the distribution. Its probably more Hollywood than Silicon Valley.

The other thing is that the goal in the tech industryis still to make companies. Acceleratorsand incubators have acompany fetish. Itsall companies and a company-first mentality. Butin AI, the company isnt necessarily theinteresting thing, its the product. We want tofocuson that first. Some will become companies, and some will not. We want the best.

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Phil Libin exits General Catalyst for All Turtles, a new AI 'startup ... - TechCrunch

Forbes

Why AI And Healthcare Must Learn To Play Together Forbes Because artificial intelligence (AI) has become so buzzy, and applied so indiscriminatelyAI for pot, AI for beer brewing, AI for horse care, AI for sex ed (all examples courtesy of CB Insights)it's easy to dismiss as just another passing trend, like ...

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Why AI And Healthcare Must Learn To Play Together - Forbes

Where will self-driving cars go once they drop you off? In big cities, parking can be expensive and take forever to find. But TechCrunch Disrupt NY hackathon team Val.ai built a way for autonomous vehicles to participate in auctions for nearby parking spaces.

When a self-driving car needs to park itself, it can submit real-time bids for local spots occupied by others. If a currently parked car knows it needs to pick someone up soon, and it will earn more from selling the parking spot now than the gas it might burn driving around until its pick-up time, it can accept a bid. The winning bidder vehicle gets directions to the spot, and the one parked there vacates when it arrives.

While there arent so many self-driving cars on the road that we need this just yet, technology like Val.ai could eventually reduce congestion and pollution by more efficiently routing cars to spaces. The project was built using Clarifai, ThingSpace and MapQuest.

But theres one big problem with Val.ai. The pitch made it sound like the cars would be auctioning off public parking spots. Squatting in these spots until another car pays enough could be seen as abusing public resources for private gain. When a few startups tried to do this a few years ago for human-driven cars, we labeled these resource-abusing startups as #JerkTech.

The real opportunity here for a business that doesnt unfairly profit off the commons is to set up commercial parking lots that use this real-time bidding system.

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Val.ai lets self-driving cars bid for parking spots - TechCrunch

Financial Times

Hollywood 'studio' approach aims to free-up AI entrepreneurs Financial Times The focus on AI reflected a belief that the technology had moved beyond the research stage and was now ready to reshape the way people interact with computers, said Mr Libin. All Turtles is starting out with 10 AI projects in San Francisco, some of ...

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Hollywood 'studio' approach aims to free-up AI entrepreneurs - Financial Times

Apple has acquired Lattice.io, a data intelligence company.

Apple has acquired data intelligence company Lattice.io, according to a TechCrunch report Saturday.

Lattice.io uses machine learning to transform "dark data" such as unstructured text and images into structured data for use by traditional data analysis tools. Founded in 2015, Lattice.io was born out of the Stanford research project DeepDive, a framework for extracting raw data from text.

Apple paid $200 million for the Menlo Park, California-based company, TechCrunch reported. The deal is said to have closed a few weeks ago, with about 20 Lattice.io engineers joining Apple.

Lattice.io was co-founded by Michael Carafella, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan. Carafella, who serves as the company's CEO, is a co-creator of Hadoop, an open-source technology designed for analysis of big volumes of data. Chris Re, a professor of computer science at Stanford, is also Lattice.io co-founder.

Lattice.io didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, but Apple confirmed the acquisition with its routine statements about its acquisitions.

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," a spokeswoman said.

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Apple acquires AI startup Lattice.io - CNET