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    Algorithms: In Control?, Fall 2017

    Vol. 14 No. 1  

    Technology

    Artificial Intelligence: Revolution or Evolution?

    Eileen Smith Ewing, Chair 2016–17

    A column from the 2016–2017 Chair of the Section of Science & Technology Law.

    Articles

    Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

    A Simple Guide to Machine Learning

    By Warren E. Agin

    “Artificial intelligence” (AI) usually refers to machine learning. Machine learning uses algorithms to perform inductive reasoning, figuring out “the rules” given the factual inputs and the results. Applying those rules to new sets of factual inputs can deduce results in new cases. Lawyers are already using machine learning to help with legal research, evaluate pleadings, perform large-scale document review, and more.

    Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

    Artificial Intelligence in Health Care : Applications and Legal Issues

    by W. Nicholson Price II

    Big data and machine learning are enabling innovators to enhance clinical care, advance medical research, and improve efficiency, through the use of “black-box” algorithms that are too complex for their reasoning to be understood. Safety regulation, medical malpractice and product liability claims, intellectual property, and patient privacy will impact the way black-box medicine is developed and deployed.

    Technology

    AI and Medicine : How Fast Will Adaptation Occur?

    By Matthew Henshon

    Computers excel at working with “structured data,” such as billing codes or lab test results, but human medical judgment and doctor’s notes are much harder for a computer to analyze. In medicine, the cost of a false positive may be low, but the cost of a false negative can be catastrophic. Thus, applying AI to medicine requires small steps that can supplement and enhance—rather than replace—human decision making.

    Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

    Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Legal Practice

    By Gary E. Marchant

    Despite the alarming headlines, AI will not replace most lawyers’ jobs, at least in the short term. It will create new legal issues for lawyers, such as the liability issues of autonomous cars and the safety of medical robots, and will transform the way lawyers practice, with technology-assisted review, legal analytics, and practice management assistants, but it will be an evolution, not a revolution.

    Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

    Artificial Intelligence and the Law : More Questions Than Answers?

    By Kay Firth-Butterfield

    Current U.S. legislation involving AI is principally concerned with data privacy and autonomous vehicles. The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will give citizens the right to demand an account of how an adverse decision was achieved. This will require transparency in AI systems, which will raise intellectual property and privacy issues that will have to be reconciled with legislation or in the courts.

    Technology

    Why Changes in Data Science Are Driving a Need for Quantum Law and Policy, and How We Get There

    By April F. Doss

    We are living in a Newtonian age with respect to legal and policy issues for emerging technologies, content with traditional approaches and relying on the slow accretion of precedent. If we do not make the leap to quantum policy, embracing a duality where conflicting rights and ideals are balanced and encouraged to thrive at the same time, our entire ecosystem of jurisprudence and privacy rights will suffer.

    About the SciTech Lawyer

    The SciTech Lawyer is published quarterly as a service to its members by the Section of Science & Technology Law of the American Bar Association. It endeavors to provide information about current developments in law, science, medicine, and technology that is of professional interest to the members of the ABA Section of Science & Technology Law.

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