header-logo header-logo

Robot Sophia comes of age

26 July 2018 / Matthew Kay
Issue: 7803 / Categories: Features , Technology
printer mail-detail
nlj_7803_backpage

Matthew Kay introduces the robot lawyers of the future & recommends making friends with AI

Robot Sophia was granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia last year. If you haven’t heard of her (though should we even be using these pronouns?) Sophia is a humanoid robot, capable of not only delivering a speech, but, scarily, expressing opinions about how robots should be entitled to the same rights as humans. Whether a marketing ploy or not, Sophia is eerily human like and makes you wonder whether we are one step closer to creating sentient AI beings.

With this in mind, it’s particularly worrying that lecturers in The Times’ The Brief warned earlier this year that law schools are not teaching their students technology and the law, which is leaving them ‘dangerously exposed’ (The Brief , 25 January 2018). At a time when robots and AI systems are not only used in a variety of professions including the law, but also in the home as an assistant, it’s scary that law qualifications—the LPC and the proposed

If you are not a subscriber, subscribe now to read this content
If you are already a subscriber sign in
...or Register for two weeks' free access to subscriber content

MOVERS & SHAKERS

CBI South-East Council—Mike Wilson

CBI South-East Council—Mike Wilson

Blake Morgan managing partner appointed chair of CBI South-East Council

Birketts—Phillippa O’Neill

Birketts—Phillippa O’Neill

Commercial dispute resolution team welcomes partner in Cambridge

Charles Russell Speechlys—Matthew Griffin

Charles Russell Speechlys—Matthew Griffin

Firm strengthens international funds capability with senior hire

NEWS
The proposed £11bn redress scheme following the Supreme Court’s motor finance rulings is analysed in this week’s NLJ by Fred Philpott of Gough Square Chambers
In this week's issue, Stephen Gold, NLJ columnist and former district judge, surveys another eclectic fortnight in procedure. With humour and humanity, he reminds readers that beneath the procedural dust, the law still changes lives
Generative AI isn’t the villain of the courtroom—it’s the misunderstanding of it that’s dangerous, argues Dr Alan Ma of Birmingham City University and the Birmingham Law Society in this week's NLJ
James Naylor of Naylor Solicitors dissects the government’s plan to outlaw upward-only rent review (UORR) clauses in new commercial leases under Schedule 31 of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, in this week's NLJ. The reform, he explains, marks a seismic shift in landlord-tenant power dynamics: rents will no longer rise inexorably, and tenants gain statutory caps and procedural rights
Writing in NLJ this week, James Harrison and Jenna Coad of Penningtons Manches Cooper chart the Privy Council’s demolition of the long-standing ‘shareholder rule’ in Jardine Strategic v Oasis Investments
back-to-top-scroll